


The Poisoned End

by Sophia_Bryth



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Drama, F/M, Graphic Depictions of Illness, Hurt/Comfort, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Suspense, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2016-01-05
Packaged: 2018-02-23 15:32:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2552618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sophia_Bryth/pseuds/Sophia_Bryth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"<em>There's poison in his blood and it's killing him.</em>"</p><p>Emma Hawke can't help the way she feels about Sebastian Vael, even if she knows and accepts she can never act on those feelings. </p><p>But when an incident on the Wounded Coast sets in motion a devastating series of events that threatens to separate them forever, does she still have a choice?</p><p>(Updated at a glacial pace.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Itching for a Fight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma regrets a rash decision, and Sebastian has some unexpected news that does little to improve her mood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Plot presumes that Sebastian joined Hawke shortly after the end of Act I and opens at the beginning of Act II.

## 

Chapter 1 

### 

Itching for a Fight 

It was late in the afternoon on the Wounded Coast when they turned home towards Kirkwall.

It was the hour when the sun was just beginning to dip below the jagged peaks of Sundermount in the distance, the time of the day when the shadows started to lengthen over the dusty earth. The air hung heavy and thick, buzzing with the chorus of insects, flora rustled by the faintest draught of wind yet not enough as to provide respite from the oppressive heat of the afternoon. Waves battered rocky cliffs far down below the trail that led back to the city, the water an incandescent teal against the burnt palette of the deepening sunset.

For all the tranquil beauty around her, the woman stalking along the path through this bounty of scenery looked incredibly dour.

 _Nearly dusk and it's still hot enough to melt the skin off a darkspawn_ , Emma Hawke thought to herself as she navigated her way down a steep section of trail, stooping under errant branches that snaked out into the path to accommodate her exceptional height, long elegant looking limbs clad in black leather and silver clasps. The branches brushed against the twin dagger hilts rising up from behind each of her shoulders where her dark waves of hair were gathered in a knot at the black of her neck with odd damp strands spilling out. Bangs slanted across her face, still fresh with youth but hardened by untold trials. The locks were matted to her forehead with sweat, obscuring one penetrating gray eye set above sharp cheekbones and pale pink lips set into a grim line.

As she walked she considered that the day had been a complete and utter bust; a water of time and tedious besides. She cursed herself for the sudden flight of fancy that had brought her here. Wandering the city, prowling for trouble if she were being honest with herself, she had been approached by an old man. Ain't you that Hawke woman? She remembered him asking. She also remembered the stench of ale on his breath and she winced at the memory. He'd babbled and slurred about the raiders hiding out in a cave up the coast, robbing unsuspecting travelers passing by and worse. She'd leapt at the prospect of a fight, promised him she'd take care of it that very day and without a second though she'd rounded up a few of her companions and rushed out of the city.

Three hours they had hiked under the unrelenting sun up to the spot the lush had described to her. But they didn't find any raiders, or any sign that there had been raiders about recently. Or ever, for that matter. The Wounded Coast was complete in its empty tranquility that day and it left the rogue in the most foul of moods. She sulked along, her already serious face pulled into a deep frown, making mental notes to have Varric track down whoever had up her up to what she now knew could only ever have been a wild bronto chase, scolding herself even as she did. _What sort of idiot takes off on a tip from a half-cocked rummy old man in Darktown?_

"Hawke, slow down!"

Emma halted her march and turned to look back up the path in the direction of the voice. She had outpaced her companions by a considerable margin and they were now a solid number of yards behind her, so far she could hardly make out the features of the tall, slim elf calling to her, only a shock of white hair and black armor prominent at a distance, his hands cupped around his mouth to amplify his deep rocky voice. She waved at him and then stood and waited, resting slim fingers clad in gloves cut off at the knuckles on her hips, her impatience prominent in her posture.

Back up the path, Merrill made a puzzled face as she stood next to Fenris. "Hawke looks so cross. Why do you think? I hope it isn't something I've done." She said, worrying the slack length of the belt that clinched her simple green tunic at the waist. She was so small of stature that only the top of the unadorned wooden staff slung across her back reached his height.

Fenris glowered down at her, looking especially grim next to her clad in the lethal spikes of his armor, the gargantuan blade he carried as large as she was. "We did not find any raiders." He answered simply, more than a little annoyed himself. It was unbearably hot.

"Oh." The tiny Dalish mage seemed to consider that. "Shouldn't that be a good thing? Less killing and robbing for everyone."

She wasn't wrong, but Fenris knew better than most that was not how Emma Hawke's mind worked. "She does not see it that way. She wanted action, and did not get it." He explained with a shrug.

Merrill brightened. "What shall we do to try and cheer her up then?"

 _"We_ are not going to try anything." He growled and before Merrill could protest she was interrupted by the fourth member of their party.

"I'll deal with her." Sebastian Vael volunteered from behind them, all gleaming white armor and impossible blue eyes. The light of the fading sun accented the red tones of his auburn hair. "Just watch." He said, and as they strode up to Emma he gave her a brilliant smile, amusement evident in his honeyed Starkhaven lilt as he called to her, "is it your wish we run back to Kirkwall, Lady Hawke?

"You shouldn't mention running." Merrill whispered to him. "She hates running unless she's chasing something wicked to stab."

"That's right." Emma confirmed, hearing her easily. "I ran up here to stab wicked raiders but as it turns out they've all got better sense than that. They're probably off somewhere with shade. Maker, but you're all so slow. Is it so much to ask we hurry back? I'm starving and after dinner I'd like a cold bath in which to drown myself for being stupid enough to have been taken by some crazy old codger." She huffed as she tugged at the collar of her leathers, pulling them away from her skin, trying to allow even the slightest breeze between fabric and skin. After a pause she narrowed her eyes with suspicion at Sebastian, hand still on her collar. "And since when am I Lady Hawke."

"It fits you." Merrill said, a dreamy look in her big green eyes.

"Don't be ridiculous." Emma said, appalled. "I'm no lady. All those baffling layers of clothing and those horrid stuffy parties? Never mind how awful those Hightown women are, always so demure and delicate, ever so polite to your face, but they'll stab you in the back the moment you've turned. I'd rather spend an evening with the Qunari. At least them I understand."

"I thought you liked stabbing things in the back?" Merrill asked with a confused frown. Emma rolled her eyes and ignored her.

"It's not as bad as all that, you know. I did enjoy society life once." Sebastian countered. "You should try it sometime. I have no doubt the confidence with which you wear dirt on your nose would be the envy of many." He teased her with a sly grin.

Emma turned a shade or two more flushed as she hastily raised an arm to scrub her face with her sleeve. "Yes, well...how did a love for parties and pretty ladies work out for you, _Brother_ Sebastian?" She retorted, recovering her cool demeanor.

He laughed at that, a rich and genuine sound. "Quite well, I'd say. After all, my misspent youth led me to find the Grace of the Maker and his beloved Andraste, who in turn have seen fit to give me the blessing your acquaintance, my Lady." He beamed, without any hint of insincerity. Sebastian was nothing if not exhaustingly sincere.

Emma feigned a rude noise in her throat. "I'm not a lady." She grumbled, signifying her surrender in the matter. She spun on her heel too late to hide the smile spreading across her face, her ill temper forgotten for the moment. She took a few steps down the path, then stopped.

 _Maker, how does he do that?_ She wondered, shook her head, and then continued on.

Sebastian clasped Fenris on the shoulder as he followed after her retreating form. "You see? Easy."

~~~

They continued down the path together as twilight fell, though Emma still led the way. A few steps behind her Merrill had begun talking to herself in a low voice, a mostly unintelligible mix of Common and Dalish but it was pleasant enough upon the ear. Fenris brought up the rear several paces farther back, sauntering along in moody silence as was his usual wont. Sebastian walked beside Emma and the pair ambled in silence for a long while, content to listen to the ambient evening noise of the coast accented by the rise and fall of the petit mage's soliloquy. As the sun had set the awful heat had finally relented, if only a little.

"She's spending too much time locked away with that vile mirror of hers. I only brought her along today because I don't think she's been outside in a week." Emma said in a conspiratorial voice, although she suspected even if she had shouted it Merrill was too far gone to hear her. When Sebastian didn't say anything she looked over at him. His brow was furrowed, eyes fixed straight ahead, a preoccupied look set on the chiseled features of his face.

"I've a confession to make." He said without preamble after a long moment, as if she hadn't said anything at all.

"Is that so?" Emma was more than a little surprised, taken back but the sudden gravity of his tone. He hadn't seemed troubled just awhile ago. She shrugged "It's a bit backwards, a priest confessing to an unrepentant miscreant, but go on."

"You mentioned the Qunari before. I heard from the Viscount that he'd asked for your help with them. Said the Arishock asked for you by name. Are you truly going to meet with him?"

_Andraste's ass._

"Oh, that." Emma shrugged again with feigned indifference. "I hadn't decided yet."

It was her nature to keep things to herself, but Emma knew this request in particular was significant and she'd been dreading the fuss it would cause with the others inevitably found out. Sebastian would know her indecision was an act and that she'd made up her mind as soon as she'd been asked, but before he could press further she added, "I've met him before. The Arishock. Next to him I seem downright cheerful." When her jest elicited no reaction she tried, "so did you meet with the Viscount to gossip about me? That's not very priestly, you know."

"That's not it." He hesitated as though to gather his thoughts, then went on. "I had a letter from Tantervale some time back. There are nobles there that want to meet with me about the situation in Starkhaven. I wasn't sure at first but I've been thinking about it quite a lot. I met with the Viscount to seek his advice."

This piece of news made Emma's eyebrows raise into the fringe of her bangs. Sebastian sometimes wondered aloud about his place as the exiled prince of Starkhaven, the last living member of the royal Vael family, but nothing had ever come of it. This sounded different.

"Have you decided to go?" The question burst out of her almost unbidden.

"I have. I leave in a fortnight."

The words had a sense of finality that made Emma's gut twist unpleasantly and she let go of the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding, her mind beginning to hum with the start of a thousand uncomfortable thoughts. She didn't know what to say, so they went on a ways without speaking. She glanced at him again and found him watching her.

"Are you upset I spoke to the Viscount before I told you?" His concern was genuine. She must have looked as uneasy as she felt.

Emma gave a small shake of her head in the negative. "You know I don't care much for politics. You were right to have gone to him first." She assured him. "I'm just not sure I understand. I thought you were going to be Brother Sebastian of Kirkwall for life." Her gaze drifted out across the sea as she spoke and when she looked back he was still studying her, like he was searching for something. Her gut twisted again.

"I thought so, but things are...different now." He said the words with care, but if Emma was supposed to gleam some meaning from them she failed to do so.

Her face darkened as he spoke. "Different? How?" She demanded, rather more harshly than was called for. The conversation was making her uneasy now, and as it often did with her, unease yielded quickly to anger.

"It will be difficult for me to explain. I don't think I can yet." He said awkwardly, uncomfortably now as well as he sensed her anger.

Emma couldn't imagine why he was being so evasive. It only made her angrier. "Then what the fuck are you telling me any of this for?" She raised her voice as she cursed, knowing full well that it displeased him. Behind them Merrill went silent, roused from reverie by the outburst.

"I wanted to know what you thought because I value your opinion. But if you're going to be like that, then don't bother." He huffed and strode off ahead of her, hands clenched into fists at his sides.

As she watched him go Emma allowed herself to consider the reason the news made her so uneasy.

It had been three years since she’d met Sebastian Vael. She had still been a penniless refugee then, scraping together coin from odd jobs, trying to get the funds to join an expedition to the Deep Roads. Visiting the Chanter’s board one afternoon she’d strolled up to find him having a heated argument with no less than the Grand Cleric and in broad daylight. He was posting a notice to the board as they argued and when the Grand Cleric had tried to remove it he’d fired an arrow _this_ close to her, pinning the page back in place before he’d stormed off, so blinded by his anger he'd nearly knocked her over as he blew past her out of the square.

Instantly enamored by his righteous fury and sympathetic for his desire to see justice done, as she learned when she had snatched the notice off the board and learned about the murder of his family, she set about wiping out the mercenary group responsible that very afternoon. Not two days later she'd marched up to him as he stood in the Chantry to tell him that the deed was done. He’d been stunned but endlessly grateful and it wasn’t very long after he started joining her on her adventures around the city. 

It was then they had discovered the similarity of their pasts, although the exact circumstances of their upbringings could not have been more different. Given the sense of quiet faith he normally radiated Emma had been as surprised as anyone to learn that Sebastian had been packed up and forced into the Chantry after his uncontrollable behavior made him the scandal and shame of Starkhaven, his exploits so outrageous that there were still whispers of the profligate prince almost a decade later. She had confided in him then that she had only joined the Fereldan army after getting herself into trouble over an especially nasty brawl in a tavern. She told him how her not entirely voluntary enlistment had been a great relief to her family, as she had often acted with the sort of reckless abandon that invited scrutiny that threatened to expose her Father and Sister, apostates, to the Templars.

In their new lives both had found a way to escape the pit of depravity before it had swallowed them whole and they admired and encourages the other's honest desire to lead a life of purpose. Sebastian had found his in service to the Maker, as Emma was finding herself in standing against the chaos that seemed to permeate every crevice in Kirkwall.

But now as if on a whim and avoiding any sort of explanation, he had decided to explore the possibility of staking a claim for the throne in a land that had almost ruined him. He was going so far as to leave the city.

 _He's leaving you. That's what really bothers you._ The tiny voice seethed in a dark part of her mind, rattling uncomfortably in her skull.

No one would blame her for perhaps desiring more than his friendship. She wasn't chaste, after all, and Maker knew there were few who could deny Sebastian Vael was handsome. Impressively tall though Emma was he was taller than her still, the line of his broad shoulders tapering down his torso to slim hips and he had skin the color of warm caramel. The features of his face were as if they had been sculpted from marble, jaw and nose and cheekbones molded and sharp, and his eyes were such a shocking blue that until she had seen otherwise she had believed that they contained a light of their own and would shine even in the dark. He was calm and she liked to hear him speak, his cultured Starkhaven accent like honey in her ears. She would be lying if she tried to deny she had spent more than passing idle thought what might have been if they had crossed paths as their former, wanton selves.

Not that she could imagine he would feel the same way about her as their present selves, even beyond his acceptance of chastity. It wasn't that she felt physically inadequate. Beautiful, some might have called her; statuesque. It was true enough as long as she was standing still. Taller than most men and slim with a shapely silhouette, with skin of an unblemished pale creamy hue and possessed of a detached and stately air, she certainly fir the description. Animated though she was aloof and sullen, needlessly secretive and was a spectacular failure at picking up cues and subtext in actions and conversation to frequently disastrous results. That she lived her life skirting the letter of the law, and had been known to make decisions she knew offended Sebastian's beliefs as a man of the Chantry was merely the icing on the cake, she thought.

She was all too aware there was even less of a place for her in the life of a prince than there was in the life of a Chantry brother. The fact she couldn't deny it was his birthright and perhaps his duty to at least consider the path, now that he was the only one left, made it no less a bitter pill to swallow.

 _Priest or prince, he'll never be yours,_ the voice in her head hissed. It didn't matter.

“Sebastian, wait.” She called after him, breaking into a jog to catch up to him. He didn't look at her. "I'm sorry, I've no good reason to be cross." _Liar._ "It's a bit sudden, that's all."

It was as close to the truth as she'd get.

His hands relaxed and he turned apologetic, anger forgotten. "I should be sorry. I shouldn't have sprung it on you like this." He gave her a small smile. "So, what do you think?"

She tried to think of something diplomatic to say, but in the space of her silence Emma recognized the eerie quiet around them. Not just that no one was speaking, but that the crickets had ceased their chirping, the only sound the rustle of faint breeze and the crash of water below on the beach. The Wounded Coast was never this quiet.

"Hawke, what is it?" Sebastian asked, his eyes following hers as she swept the area. They had reached a wide opening in the path, rocky outcrops ringing the half farthest from them, more than a stone's throw from end to end. There was the flicker of torchlight in the distance, a sign that they were approaching the area patrolled by the city guard and were almost home. Fenris joined them, having much the same concern as Emma. He reached for his massive blade.

"Listen." She instructed and as if on a cue there was the sound of boots on stone. Figures in black swarmed from cover around the rocky outcrop, dropping down from the ledges to the clearing. The men were rushing towards them with weapons drawn.

Emma glanced at the two men on either side of her, Sebastian fitting his bow with an arrow as Fenris gripped the hilt of his sword tightly. A smile curved on her face. "Right." She said, the thought of all else forgotten.

The fight was on.


	2. An Incident on the Wounded Coast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What appears to be a routine skirmish ends up being anything but.

## 

Chapter 2 

### 

An Incident on the Wounded Coast 

Emma made a hasty count of the attackers storming towards them. They were outnumbered five to one at least and more were coming. Darkness had fallen and moonlight bathed the space, torchlight flickering in the distance. She turned to the others. 

“You know what to do.” She said.

The crackle of answering magic was audible as Merrill unleashed a powerful paralyzing spell, halting an oncoming group at the fore of the assault. Sebastian lifted his bow and picked off the stricken foes in quick succession, before they fell back to find a better vantage point..

“Focus on the archers first.” Emma called after them, then looked at Fenris and smirked. “Usual?” He nodded and then charged forward with a snarl, hacking and slashing his way into the scrum.

She followed after him as she reached back, fingers curling around the familiar grips of her blades as they were unsheathed. She sensed motion to her left, saw the blur of the weapon coming towards her. Her blades cut a song through the air as she spun towards it and halted the blow. She drove her boot into her foe’s gut and when he doubled over she sank her blades into his back, twisting the daggers for good measure with a vicious grin. _Easy._ She pushed off the man, blades slipping from ruined flesh, focus already on to her next target.

Emma fought behind Fenris across clearing as arrows and spells zipped past them. She used the dark and the smoke created by Merrill’s magic as she darted in and out of sight, emerging from cover to strike and then vanishing again. Their opponents were falling with ease, more than once Emma turned her attention to an assailant to find they had already fallen, though she could not always tell in the dim light who had taken them down. In front of her an attacker was rounding Fenris, coming up behind him and she moved deftly, bursting from the wisps of smoke, daggers raised to strike and the man crumpled before her.

Unconcerned with the scene behind him Fenris swung his sword in a wide arc, slicing two of his targets in half in one swift blow, drenching himself in blood, his lyrium brands flashing in the dim light. Though she knew he had paid a terrible price for it Emma envied his raw strength and considered herself fortunate for the privilege to fight beside him. They’d had an undeniable chemistry in battle from the very first. Fenris was the muscle, fearless, always in the thick of it. He drew attention she could exploit to devastating effect, overwhelming their enemies at unawares, the brain. They both embodied a certain calculated brutality that could be a terrible sight to behold, sure and deadly. She was loathe to go to battle without him. 

The attack left the elf ill-prepared to counter a further assault, and another enemy was fast closing in on him. "Fenris, left!" she yelled, and the elf rolled smoothly to his right, avoiding the blow. She sprinted towards the attacker to discourage a further attack and the man turned his sword on her and charged.

Emma found a curious freedom in the chaos of combat. There were no rules or expectations in a fight to the death, only the drive to kill or be killed. It was simple and she was good at it. As she stared down the man charging towards her, that knowledge brought her a strange sense of serenity. Her vision was clearer, her breathing steady, time flowed just a touch slower. There were only feet between them now. 

"Get down!" Fenris bellowed and in a single fluid motion she dropped into a slide as the assailant's blade swung forward, slicing through empty air as it sailed harmlessly over her had as she slid past him. Fenris had recovered, coming up behind and lunging forward, his massive broadsword ran their foe through to the hilt. Emma could not see the man's face but she could hear his last strangled gasp as he dropped to the earth with a satisfying thud. She pulled out of the slide smoothly, scanning the clearing. The skirmish was finished, the ground smeared with blood and worse with bodies that littered the vicinity. It had been so easy.

“Perhaps we should be more mindful of the mess we’re leaving behind. Aveline is going to have a fit when she gets wind of this." She joked, jubilant in their victory, wiping her blades on her trousers before returning them to their sheathes. Fenris scowled as he pulled his blade free. “You alright?” She asked, and Fenris grunted in assent. Merrill and Sebastian were jogging back towards them, also looking unhurt. They paused periodically to pull arrows from the bodies as they passed them.

Emma approached the nearest corpse and nudged it with the tip of her boot, turning it onto its back. She crouched down to make a search of the man's pockets, searching for anything of value, or anything that might explain their presence on the coast. All she found were a few coins, which she shoved into her own pouch out of habit rather than need. His sword lay at his side. She picked it up, testing the balance, scrutinizing it.

“They’ve got good steel but they fought like amateurs.” She finally proclaimed, dropping the blade and rising back to her full height, but as she stared down at the body she looked perplexed.

“These are not raiders.” Fenris spoke her thoughts. Emma nodded.

“Bandits on the run?” She suggested.

“Maybe. Why should they attack us then?” He said and strode off to search the rest of the bodies.

Emma looked down at the man for a moment longer. If they were bandits skipping town, it didn't make any sense that they should attack when they were hidden and could have remained undetected. The more she thought about it the more the whole thing started to reek of deliberation, but it was strange. She knew she had made enough enemies, but this was a bad place for an assault, it wasn't as if anyone could have known...except that there was. The memory of vile ale breath came back to her. _Andraste's Ass._ She decided she needed to see Varric as soon as they got back to the city.

She moved on to the next body. The assault had been a poor attempt, the men used to carry it out not very skilled, but the mystery of it vexed her still. The man at her feet had a large, sallow faced with a gruesome scar from eyebrow to chin. She crouched down to repeat her earlier inspection, reaching towards him when his eyes snapped open and he launched himself at her, catching her off guard and she toppled over with an undignified grunt.

The villain pinned Emma to the ground as his hands went to her throat, choking her, squeezing the air from her lungs. She clawed at his face, unable to call for help. Flat on her back she couldn’t reach her daggers, could only scratch and struggle against his heavy weight as she fought to breath, her thoughts increasingly half formed and incoherent as she starved for air. She was weakening, tendrils of darkness starting to wrap the corners of her mind and it was getting difficult to move, her limbs heavy and slow to respond. As her resistance failed the man moved one of his hands, reaching for his boot and a dagger materialized over her. Her eyelids fluttered as she tried to focus on it, still fighting even as oblivion was pulling her under, taking her away from the clearing. 

“Stupid bitch, it’s too late.” His voice sounded so very far away and he was leering at her, his sallow face filling her failing vision. The disfigured man reared back, blade poised to plunge when the incoming arrow struck him dead between his eyes. The grip on Emma’s neck loosened as the life was extinguished from his face and the man collapsed heavily on top of her. 

“Emma!” She barely heard the panicked yell as she gasped for air, taking in greedy lungfuls, coughed and sputtered. She pushed the body off of her and was struggling to her knees as Sebastian reached her. "Are you hurt?" She couldn’t speak but she shook her head and waved him off as she tried to catch her breath. Merrill and Fenris joined them. She raised a hand to her throat and winced, the skin raw and sore. There would be bruises.

“Bastard almost got me.” She croaked, her voice hoarse as she looked up at him. “That was a good shot. Thank you.” She told him.

“Thank the Maker.” He breathed in relief. “You never have to have to thank me, Hawke. I would never let you come to harm.” When he said her name something pulled at her, thoughts still disjointed.

“That's...such a lovely thing to say.” Merrill sighed and clasped her hands against her face. Emma glared at her as she dragged herself to her feet.

“You've been listening to too many of Varric's stories again. Sebastian wouldn’t let you come to harm either.” She said, echoing his words, with every passing moment she was feeling more herself, embarrassed now and eager to forget the whole thing. 

Sebastian frowned. “No, of course not.” He agreed absently.

“We should move on.” Fenris said. 

"A moment, please." Sebastian said. "I'll finish pulling my arrows." He said and walked away.

“Wait, I’ll help!” Merrill yelled after him, bouncing off.

Fenris saw the indents between Emma’s storm gray eyes that indicated she was thinking about something with a certain degree of intensity. “Something wrong, Hawke?” The indents vanished.

“Hm? A man did just try to choke me to death.” She said but that wasn’t it. The memory that had escaped her had returned and she couldn’t believe what she thought she’d heard. It was _Emma_ , called in that Starkhaven cadence over and over again. It couldn’t have been. No one called her that. It was a soft name, evocative of a gentle nature she did not possess. She was a warrior. She’d been to war, bore the scars as witness. Even her own Mother called her Hawke, strange though it seemed. That she thought she heard Sebastian use it in a moment a panic, thinking she might be hurt, smacked of an almost unbearable intimacy. It couldn’t be. She decided she must have imagined it, a trick of her floundering mind. 

“Hawke.” Fenris warned, motioning with his head, snapping her back to attention. A second figure, this one heavily cloaked, was rising to its feet not far from them. Emma looked at the man.

“Oy!” She called to him, annoyed. “How many of you do we have to kill twice?” She started moving towards him, reaching for her daggers.

“I surrender!” The figure called as she approached, a male voice and he made no movement. Emma decided she wanted to parley, if only to find out the truth of the matter. She could not see his hands, hidden underneath the cloak. 

“Show me your hands and we’ll talk.” She instructed, slowing her pace, blades poised as she waited.

That was when the crossbow appeared from beneath the deep folds of the cloak with a startling suddenness, lifted into position without pretense. Emma dropped to the ground, anticipating the shot but none came. When she looked up she saw the assailant had the weapon pointed away from her, across the clearing to where Merrill and Sebastian stood. They had their backs turned, unaware of the danger.

Spurred to action Emma scrambled to her feet, screaming out a warning as she barreled towards the figure. She didn’t know if should could make it in time to prevent the shot and she could only hope against hope her charge would dissuade the man, that he would give in to the base instinct to survive. He must have known that if he took the shot he would be helpless against her. 

If the man worried about his fate at her hands, he made no sign of it and never flinched. Emma hurled herself at him as she closed in, leading with her blades, tackling him as she heard the creak of the crossbow recoil just before her steel sunk into flesh. Swift though she had been, it was too late. 

Her blood ran cold as the sonorous clang of metal on metal rang through the clearing. The crossbow clattered to the ground, Emma on top of the felled assassin. She raised her eyes to confirm what she already knew to be true. Sebastian’s outline on the ground, deathly still in the moonlight, Merrill running towards him. 

An inhuman wail tore from inside her then, rage bursting forth and for a time she had no more coherent thoughts.


	3. Regrets and Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma tries to deal with the aftermath of the attack on the Coast. Elsewhere in Kirkwall, a nefarious plot is unveiled.

## 

Chapter 3 

### 

Regrets and Revelations 

Emma saw Sebastian’s still form and all rational thought abandoned her. So immediate and intense was her grief she felt physical pain, as though she were being torn apart from the inside out. It served to breed unadulterated rage within her and she could only drown in it, her vision gone red. She stabbed the assailant a second time, a third, and then again, though her initial attack had ended him. Blood spatter covered her as her blades rose and fell over and over, feral curses spilling from her lips even as tears streamed down her face. She couldn't stop, didn't want to stop. She wanted the fiend worse than dead. Obliterated. Shredded from the very fabric of reality, and it was still too kind a fate for what the monster had done.

“Enough Hawke!” She didn’t hear Fenris say the words, deafened by her fury. His strong wiry arms wrapped around her, lifting her away from the mangled remnants. She struggled against his grip, her daggers falling from her hands, kicking the air, desperate to wrench herself free. 

“Let me fucking go!” She howled, inconsolable. “I’m not fucking finished! He killed Sebastian. He murdered him. Let me go!” As commanded Fenris released her and she tumbled to the ground in an ungraceful heap. She laid on the ground in a tangle of limbs panting for breath, her dark hair coming undone and falling down around her shoulders. 

“Sebastian is not dead.” Was all he said to her and it was as if she had been broken from a trance. Pushing herself up on slim arms, twisting herself, her gaze turned across the clearing. Sebastian was sitting up, Merrill standing next to him, looking down at him and she could hear their voices although she could not make out the words. Emma sat still as stone as she watched them, mouth agape, struck dumbfounded. 

_Alive. He's alive,_ she thought, but the feelings of elation were fleeting, dread filling her as the implications hit her. _Maker, what have I done?_

She got to her feet, her movements stiff as she turned to retrieve her blades. She bent and picked the weapons up, her eyes drifting across what was left of the shooter. She felt sick at the sight of it. The man was unmolested but for the upper third of him and of that there was little left, only an unidentifiable mushy pile of offal where his head and shoulders should have been. It confirmed to her she had lost complete control of herself. 

There was a small and fast fading pragmatic voice in her head that insisted she had nothing to be ashamed for. The would-be killer was dead and Sebastian was alive. Beyond that were only details. It reminded her that a proclivity for violence was a part of her, had helped her make her way in the world. It was undoubtedly true, but there was always a level of calculation in it, and discipline.

Emma understood the violent way was not always the right way, and as much as she relished the feel of steel in her hands she was not a savage. As such she recognized there was nothing pragmatic or disciplined about what she'd done. She hadn't even known for certain Sebastian had been killed when she'd done it, had only acted on the presumption of the fact. 

All it had taken to undo her completely was the mere possibility that he had been fatally harmed. An unfamiliar feeling prickled at her with the realization. 

Jamming her blades into their sheathes she wiped the blood off her face with her sleeve, taking a deep shuddering breath to steady herself. She gathered her hair back into a knot at the back of her neck, still shaky fingers snagging on tangles as they ran through the dark strands. As close to composed as she would get she turned to Fenris, who had stood waiting for her while she collected herself. She looked at him a moment, not saying anything, trying to decide if she could even begin to explain. She knew she couldn't. 

“Thank you.” Was all that came out of her mouth, her voice flat and she started across the clearing before he could say anything in response. 

Indecision gnawed at Emma as she approached Merrill and Sebastian. What would she say? _Glad you’re not dead, never mind about how I lost my mind and mutilated that man because I thought he'd murdered you?_ That it could even occur to her to be arch given her present circumstances only made her shame sting worse than before. 

As she got closer she could see Sebastian’s chest plate was dented in around the shaft of the bolt, but there was no blood to be seen in the silver light of the moon. It consoled her a little, relieved that despite that whatever was to follow he had managed to escape serious injury.

"You're not hurt." She said to him, her voice a little breathless but it didn't break. It was a start. "The bolt...you fell...I thought..." She stammered, didn't know how to begin to explain her outburst. _I thought you were dead._ She couldn't say the words. He wasn't. 

"...I'd been killed?" Sebastian finished the sentence for her, the lilt of his voice soft, almost a whisper. "No, I'm not hurt." He was staring up at her like he had never seen her before. He looked bewildered, a stunned expression playing across the features of his face, and that Emma could not tell if that was because of the shot or her reaction to it made her skin crawl. 

"Yes." She said with a slight nod of her head, her bangs falling into her eyes and she brushed them away. 

"And my would be killer?" 

"Is indisposed to try again." She tensed, waiting for the enormity of her understatement to sink in. She waited for him to scold her, shout at her, call her vile and a monster, send her away, but he said nothing.

"Does that mean you killed him? I mean, it certainly looked like you killed him. That was _a lot_ of stabbing, even for you. " Merrill's rich airy voice startled Emma, who had forgotten she was present. She started at the tiny elf, eyes widening in mortified indignation, words escaping her.

"The man is dead, and no less than the villain deserved." Fenris said as he came up behind Emma, providing a rescue of sorts. "You are fortunate that you were hit on the plate." He said to Sebastian.

"Very fortunate." Sebastian agreed. Just like that he appeared to have gathered himself, his impressive calm recovered, all trace of confusion gone from his face. "It just nicked me, I think." He reached out an arm for the elf to help him up, and Fenris pulled him to his feet. He was reaching for the leather straps that secured his chest plate then, undoing the buckles. He grimaced in pain as the head of the bolt pulled free from his skin when he tugged, and Emma's face darkened. 

"You're sure you're not hurt?" She asked. 

"I've seen you take worse without complaint. It didn't go very far." He said as he reached for the dagger he kept in his left boot, small but sharp. In the dim light the only sign of the attack now was a small hole, less than the size of a copper on the mail coat he wore beneath the plate. As he rose a trickle of blood seeped from the hole, oozing down the links of mail. 

"You're bleeding." Merrill informed him, and Sebastian looked down at the front of his coat and shrugged. 

"So I am." He admitted, but did nothing about it, his focus on sawing the shaft of the bolt below the head until it snapped in two, the now disparate pieces sliding harmlessly out of the hole. 

It occurred to Emma as she watched him that she didn't think she'd ever seen him bleed before. Three years they had known each other, three years and she had never seen him get so much as a scratch, never so much as a smudge of dirt on that perposterous white armor. Now there he stood, an admittedly superficial amount of blood catching in the silver links of his coat as he returned the dagger to its place and slipped the chest plate back on, strapping it back into place. She found her shame replaced by an anxiety that did not match the severity of his injury. 

"You'll see Anders." She blurted out. It hadn't been a question. 

"There's no reason to trouble him, a potion will be fine." He said as his blue eyes flickered down to her throat, where bruises had already darkened, and he frowned. "You have more need of his skill than I do." 

"This is nothing," Emma said firmly, "you're _bleeding."_ She repeated Merrill's words, with emphasis as if he hadn't understood what they meant.

"As have we all, it does not look serious. If the man does not wish to go you cannot force him." Fenris said. 

"Like The Void I can't!" She turned on the elf, shouting at him. Before the words even left her mouth she knew it was a mistake, her composure too unsettled, her nerves still frayed. _Shut up before you make this worse than it already is._ She inhaled deeply. "I'm sorry." 

" Hawke, I'm alright." Sebastian said to her quietly. 

"Fine. Have it your own way." She snapped at him. She knew they were right. She knew she was being childish, but she could not help being annoyed at the denial of her concern. Coupled with the sting of her outburst Emma felt exhausted then. For what should have been a relatively uneventful day of slaying faceless brigands it had turned out all wrong. 

She wanted to be alone, away from all of them, but Sebastian most of all. It was only a matter of time before she knew there would be a conversation fraught with opportunity to say things she could only regret.

When they left the clearing, she was already mapping out her escape. She just had to make it to the city gates.

~~~

It had gone awry almost from the first. No one said much of anything the rest of their trip, too tired to even make the effort of chatter. It was well into the night when they reached the gates of the city. The streets were deserted, shops and stalls boarded and shuttered.

Emma launched her plan, volunteering immediately to walk Merrill back to the alienage, to keep her from getting lost as she was prone to do. She reasoned that fifteen minutes alone with her was worth the security to know she could make her way back to her mansion alone. That was where it had gone wrong. Fenris had been vehement in his insistence that he would escort her, and she tried to protest, but it had been futile and it was clear arguing the point only made her desperation evident. Left with no other choice she continued on to Hightown with Sebastian, cursing the elf under her breath as they parted, not even bothering to wish them a good night, gray eyes staring sharper than her daggers at Fenris before she sulked off. 

The night was still hot and the denizens of Kirkwall had their windows flung wide. Emma could catch fragments of their private lives spilling out into the streets through the openings. She caught the laughter and singing of drunken revelry amongst friends, the heated accusations of a quarrel, the restless crying of a babe and its mother's soothing song to quiet it back to slumber, dripping with exasperation. She was grateful for the sound, helping to fill the unbearable silence between them, helping to distract her from the sinking feeling she felt when she went over what had happened on the Coast for the umpteenth time. 

As she tried to process the conflicted range of emotions she felt she had reached an unhappy conclusion. All that had transpired on the Coast had only cemented the knowledge that she loved Sebastian, and it frightened her. Emma had taken many lovers over the years, especially during her time in Ferelden. But they were just a string of nameless, faceless men, a way to pass an hour or two and nothing more, never to see them again after. She'd certainly never had feelings for any of them, had never loved anyone, not the way she knew she loved the man walking beside her now. Loved him the way that even the idea that he had been taken from her had unraveled her completely. Loved him even though she knew she would never tell him. 

She decided she was going to tell him to go.

All the years she'd known him, all the time they'd spent together, she knew allowing herself to fall for him was folly. In the aftermath of that evening she now could not ignore it was also a danger to them both. In her mind she could see the crossbow aimed across the clearing, and as she had realized where it was pointed she had charged. In her single-minded determination it had not even occurred to her that it might have been a feint, that the man would not turn the weapon on her, an easy shot at point blank range. It would have without a doubt killed her on the spot. But the thought had never even crossed her mind, all of her training and experience abandoned in one panicked moment as she had thought only to stop the man from taking the shot at Sebastian, whatever the cost. 

Emma didn't know for certain why Sebastian stayed acquainted with her. She presumed it had to do with the way they'd met, that he felt indebted to her for avenging the death of his family. She made it a point never to ask him about it for fear that he would realize that debt had been paid long ago, if it had ever existed at all. Instead she selfishly allowed him to continue following her, putting himself in harm's way on her account. It could have killed him today. She though about what he'd said to her earlier that day, the news of his imminent trip to Tantervale. It did not escape her that was a dangerous road as well, politics in Thedas their own mire of backstabbing and treachery. If he did not wish to stay safely in the confines of the Chantry, better that the peril be for something worthy, something greater. She was nothing, no one, slaying petty bandits to sate the rage a lifetime of wrongs had burned into her. 

They had reached the Chantry courtyard, the place where they usually parted. She turned toward him. He looked weary, his armor sullied and damaged, half of the arrows lost from his quiver. She imagined she looked equally disheveled, could feel the grime caked on her, dried blood matted into her hair. She couldn't bring herself to look him in the eye, her gaze off into the distance over his shoulder as she tried to muster the courage to say the words that she knew must be said, for both their sakes.

"...You asked me what I thought about your decision to go to Tantervale, before we were interrupted." She said abruptly. "I think you should go after Starkhaven. It's your place, after all. Besides, If you stay in Kirkwall I'll only get you killed, and I wouldn't be able to live with myself if that happened." She ignored the startled look on his face. "Good night, Sebastian." She willed herself to turn and walk away.

"Hawke wait." He said to her retreating figure and she knew she shouldn't stop but she hesitated, and then she heard him moving behind her and his hand was on her arm, turning her and pulling her towards him, face to face and closer than they'd ever been. He was taller than her but not much, and she barely had to lift her chin to look him in the eye. Her breath caught in her throat, mesmerized by the blue of his eyes and the closeness of him, not touching save where he held her arm still but she would not even have had to move her feet to close the distance. All she had to do was lean, if she would let herself. She felt his fingers tighten around her arm and she'd never felt her resolve not to more sorely tested. A moment passed that felt too long and not long enough. If she didn't know better she would have though he was going to move to kiss her, but instead he swallowed hard, looking back at her and said at last, "It is no easy feat to conquer a city, you know." His voice was low. "I would have you beside me, if the day comes."

It stunned her. She pulled away from him, still staring, and he let her go, his hand falling from her arm. She could still feel the spot where he had touched her, like she had been burned. She had only just been considering why he still bothered with her, and now she thought had her answer. She wondered if it was all she'd ever been to him. A solider. A useful tool for the war he might need to fight if he wished to retake Starkhaven. She'd shown him her utility in dispatching the Flint Company when they'd met, and today had only served to confirm what she was: a rabid dog, all his very own. 

“You will always have my blades if you need them, Sebastian.” She said, the sound of her voice strange in her ears, and then she turned on her heel and hurried out of the courtyard. Sebastian called to her but this time she did not hesitate, did not look back, leaving him standing in the dark staring after her, shoulders slumped when he accepted she would not return, head bowed when finally he too turned and left.

~~~

The man approached the door to the Hightown mansion, the strike of his boots echoing off the stone buildings around him as he approached the ornate wooden door. He was wrapped in a heavy black cloak even with the heat of the evening, only a pair of dark eyes visible from beneath the hood as he raised a weathered hand to knock. 

Despite the late hour the door opened promptly after only the second rap, and the man strode past the small servant girl who bowed as he passed and he made no effort to return the formality as the door closed behind him. He removed to cloak revealing an older man, dark hair flecked with gray, his face worn and stony. The girl reached to take the cloak from him but he held firm to it.

"This will be quick. I’ll see your mistress as once.” He said, voice gruff and the girl nodded and scurried away. 

The man strode into the main hall of the mansion, made uncomfortable by the ornate surroundings. The man disliked Hightown nobility and their stuffy homes, but he loved their coin, and a job was a job. The request had been unusual and nasty but the promise of triple his usual rate had been too good to be true. It was too good to be true. Most of the men he'd sent had been cannon fodder, but some of them had been his best men and the bitch had killed them all. 

“Do you bring glad tidings, Messere?” The cold voice came from above, and the man looked up to see the outline of the woman leaning over the balcony on the level above, her features hidden in shadow. 

“I do. But we must talk about payment. That Hawke whore killed my best lieutenant. Mauled him. There's nothing even fit to return to his family.” He growled. 

“Tell me first what happened.” She said. 

“The bolt didn't kill him but the poison surely will, Lady Harriman. Sebastian Vael is a dead man. Now, let us talk coin." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank the Maker they're off the Coast. This chapter gave me such fits, I think I wrote at least five different versions of it. 
> 
> Next chapter will finally bring in the rest of the gang.


	4. Blacked Out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma copes with her frustrations by resorting to old vices. At the Chantry, Grand Cleric Elthina sends Sebastian on an errand that comes to a striking conclusion.

## 

Chapter 4 

### 

Blacked Out 

For the first time in almost a decade, Sebastian slept through the morning Chant.

It was the service he liked best, the most serene, reverent voices in song rising towards the sky as darkness gave way to the light. The dawn was an affirmation, early rays of sunlight shining through the stained glass windows of the Chantry a visceral reminder of all he had gained in his service to the Maker. Before he'd come to Kirkwall there had been no early mornings for him, only late nights that left him waking hung over when the sun was risen far into the sky.

An all too familiar feeling then when at last he woke, a sick feeling in his gut so intense he had just enough time to make it to his wash basin before he retched.

After he felt better, resting his forehead against the cool stone of the basin, his eyes closed as he made an assessment of himself, vexed by his sudden ailment. He didn't think he felt otherwise unwell, save for the sore ache that pulsed across his chest when he moved, an unfortunate reminder of all that had happened the night before. It had been a disaster, and being shot had not even been the worst of it. He was certain Hawke was upset with him. Really upset, not just her usual bluster. He had meant to tell her sooner what he planned to do but it was no easy thing to explain, how to tell her the part that she played in it.

A knock at the door pulled him from his sulking. Sebastian looked up, at last aware of the sunlight streaming through the window above him. He knew what that meant at once and he cursed himself. He looked to his bedside table but the candle on it had long since burned out and he could only guess how much he'd overslept.

The knocking persisted.

Sebastian pushed himself up and yanked open the door. He had to look down at the tiny woman that stood on the other side, dressed in the robes of an initiate. She turned a shade of crimson when he appeared. "G-grand Cleric Elthina wants to see you at once." She stammered and then she was gone, hurrying down the hallway before he could say anything at all to her. He thought he heard her stifle a giggle as she went.

He stood in the doorway staring after her, bewildered until he turned away from the door and got a look at himself in the mirror above the basin. He looked disheveled, his hair unkempt but worse than that the ties of his shirt had come open, his torso bared and the bandage he'd placed over his wound obvious.

Though the hour could only be late, he could feel it was going to be a very long day.

~~~

It was another day of unrelenting heat in Kirkwall. Without any particular trouble in mind Emma had eschewed her armor in favor of a loose white tunic under a black leather vest, the ends of her close fitting trousers tucked without care into the tops of her boots. She was climbing the stairs to the square where she would find a familiar sight. 

It was a massive statue, an effigy of a man with his hands bound behind his back and hung upside down by one leg, suspended above the nondescript door of a dingy old building. She looked up at it as she passed underneath, her usual custom, dark locks falling away from her face as she lifted her chin. The hanged man was a local landmark. The Hanged Man needed no other sign to identify itself.

The place was a dive, with a disreputable clientele to match its shoddy interior. It had too few windows, ill lit, its space filled with gnarled wooden tables and chairs so old they seemed on perpetual verge of collapse. If it was hot outside it was near to stifling inside, dank heat rolling out to greet her as she pushed open the door. It never smelled worse inside than it did in the summer, the stench of dank sawdust overwhelming, scattered on the floor around the bar to soak up the spilled drink and vomit night after night.

Emma had spent too much time in taverns at one time in her life and when she arrived in Kirkwall she was content never to see the inside of another. As she made her new life, however, she was left little choice but to accept there were precious few places where her unusual assortment of friends could gather without drawing undue attention to themselves. So it became their haunt. At least the ale was halfway decent.

Late afternoon but early for the regular crowd yet and the place was almost empty. She was there to see Varric. The Hanged Man was also where he lived, in the only decent suite the place had, though only because he furnished and maintained it at his own expense. A storyteller with an impish air that belied a calculating and enterprising mind, Varric Tethras was unlike any dwarf Emma had ever met, fair haired and beardless with a flashy way of dressing, his bright red tunic a sharp contrast to the muted tones favored by so many of his kin. He was the first friend she made when she came to Kirkwall, for better and worse, her first true confidant.

She found him sitting at a table. He wasn't alone, Merrill sitting with him and they were talking in an animated manner, three mugs on the table between them. They didn't notice her but before she could take them at unawares she was given away by someone calling out to her.

"Hawke!" Emma turned to find Isabela sauntering towards her. There was delight evident on the woman's face, brown eyes bright with mischief above a leering grin that made Emma uneasy at once. A smile like that from Isabela could mean any number of things, almost none of them virtuous.

Though she had no longer had a ship to speak of Isabela still called herself a pirate and looked every inch of one, dark brown hair swept back from her face with a bandana of royal blue, heavy gold jewlery gleaming in the dim light of the tavern adorning her ears and throat, a handsome contrast against the olive tone of her skin. As she reached Emma she slipped a familiar arm around her shoulders, steering her towards the table where Varric and Merrill were now waiting for them.

"I heard your little trip yesterday was exciting." Isabela almost purred as Emma shook her off at once. She had a broad sense of personal space that Isabela in particular had a blithe way of ignoring; Emma's rejection troubled her not at all. "Oh, Kitten already told us all about it." She said in answer to Emma's look of puzzlement, sweeping past her as she slipped into an empty chair at the table. Merrill gave Emma a small wave of greeting, a sheepish smile on her face.

"So, rough day yesterday?" Varric asked her as she dropped herself into an empty chair at the table, rickety wood creaking beneath her lithe frame.

"You might say that.'' She said without affect. The gleeful expressions persisted. "Alright, I know I'm going to regret asking, but why do you both look so amused?"

"I'm working on a new serial. Tell me what you think." Varric started. "Chapter one: A windswept beach at night. There's a battle in progress, and just when the good guys think they've won, tragedy, the pious goody-goody archer struck down by a crossbow bolt. That's when our hero, a tall, beautiful rogue..." He paused, considering her. Emma was staring daggers at him but he was unfazed by her ferocity, grinning back at her. "That's when our hero, a tall, beautiful rogue with a smoldering stare strikes, dispatching the assailant in a fit of rage. She rushes to the archer's side, crying out-"

"Oh Sebastian, are you hurt? Can I kiss it away?" Isabela called out in a breathy falsetto before she burst into raucous laughter and Varric joined her. 

"It wasn't like that." Merrill squeaked over the sound of their laughter. "I didn't say it was like that." She appealed to Emma.

"I bet you didn't." Emma huffed. She felt foolish and embarrassed enough without the outrageous way they were carrying on. It only served to validate her reticence.

"So Choir Boy took a knock and you lost your cool. I have to say I always pictured you with someone less...boring." Varric teased her as he regained his composure.

Emma felt herself tense even as her face remained impassive. "You can't be serious."

"Can't I? Oh I know, we're just friends blah blah mutual respect and admiration blah blah. Bullshit."

"You always smile when Sebastian says nice things to you." Merrill added in a dreamy voice and she sighed. "He's always saying the nicest things to you."

"Come on Hawke, just admit you have a crush on the Chantry man." Isabela cajoled.

It was more than that, but Emma would run herself through with her own blades before she would admit it. _Maker you're an ass. You wouldn't know what love is if it struck you right in your stupid face._ Harsh words in her head to drown out the nagging doubt that refused to let go, the lingering ache of feeling ripped apart when she thought he was lost.

"I don't, that would be wrong." Her voice was colder than ice. "Or have you all forgotten that he is a _priest_?

Isabela shrugged. "I spent a night with a Chantry Brother once. He was wound so tight he came before I could get his pants off, but Maker he had a talented mouth. I bet it's all that chanting." She looked self-satisfied by her own cleverness but blanched when Emma turned her furious gaze on her. "Oh Fine, keep your shirt on. Or don't. I think I'd like it better that way."

Just then a woman passed the table, dowdy and middle-aged with a vacant expression wearing a shapeless rough spun frock.

"Hey Norah." Emma called to the barmaid. "Bring me a double of something strong and don't you dare bring me anything that Isabela would drink." When the woman nodded in acknowledgement she turned back to her companions, ignoring the mystified looks on their faces. Ale was ale, though she drank little enough of that, but none of them had ever seen her drink liquor. 

If this was how the night was going to go, Emma decided she did not have to suffer it sober.

~~~

Dressed and groomed now, Sebastian raised a hand and rapped on the door of the Grand Cleric's study.

"You may enter." Came the voice from within and Sebastian opened the door.

Grand Cleric Elthina's study was a beautiful space, airy, vaulted ceililngs rising high overhead, sparsely furnished save for the heavy wooden desk that had been placed in front of the tall windows that overlooked the courtyard below, the walls lined with shelves of books kept in meticulous order. The woman herself was seated at the desk, silver hair pulled back from her placid face, dressed always in the black and scarlet robes of the sworn clergy. She had been dictating a letter to the initiate who had come to his door that morning but she stopped when she saw him.

"That will be all for now." The Grand Cleric said to the girl and she curtsied before seeing herself out, a coy smile on her face when she passed Sebastian. He didn't acknowledge her in return.

"Good Afternoon, Your Grace." Sebastian said, tilting his head in deference. "You wished to see me?"

"Sit, Sebastian." She motioned to an armchair set in front of her desk and he did as she asked. "You were missed this morning. Is there something amiss?"

"Everything is fine, thank you." He said but in his head he was no longer sure. The awful nausea that roused him lingered and was coming and going in waves. As he sat in the quiet still of the study he felt it rising again. "I was away much longer than I intended last night. I'm afraid I overslept." He felt remorseful.

The Grand Cleric considered him for a moment and her lips pursed. "You were with Leandra Amell's daughter again. That will explain your wound." Sebastian winced. No doubt the initiate had given her a full report as soon as she had returned.

"I was with Hawke, yes. She heard of criminals attacking travelers coming down the Coast road. I went to help her put a stop to it."

She gave him a stern look. "You were complicit in helping her to act as a vigilante, is what you mean."

"The City Guard cannot control that far outside the city. If she was not willing to act who would do so? The villains would be left free to do as they wanted. She gives of herself to protect the innocent, is that not the Maker's will?" He defended Hawke ardently despite that it was not at all what had happened. It was true regardless, but the Grand Cleric was unmoved. She had never approved of his association with Hawke.

"The Maker would have peace, Sebastian. That girl is no less barbaric than the criminals you profess her so eager to do away with." She looked at him with great earnestness as she made her repeated appeal. "You've come so far and done so much good. I beg you again to reconsider this madness."

Before he met Hawke he had lived a life of quiet contemplation, a shepard of the faithful in the heart of the Chantry. That started to change in the bitter days that had followed the news of the massacre in Starkhaven, murders that left him the last of his line. The serenity of grace that Sebastian found in the chantry was not absolute, the darker urges of his being never as far removed from himself as he would have others believe and they had demanded of him that the blood of his family be repaid with blood. His prayers all turned to vengeance, words full of anger and spite, desire hot in his heart that those responsible be struck down for their heinous crimes. Set in his course of retribution no one could have stopped him, not even the woman sitting in front of him now, who had objected vehemently beside him the day he had affixed his appeal for justice to the Chanter's Board.

He could never have anticipated the form his champion would take. A woman his own age, wearing shabby hide armor too short for her long limbs, her wrists left exposed by the sleeves of her jacket. Even so she was a striking presence, beauty cold and sharp as the steel of the daggers she carried with her, eyes the color of slate full of triumph. When she spoke her voice was polished, clear and strong as the sound of the bells that kept time in the city and she told him she had wiped out an entire company of experienced killers with an air of nonchalance as if it were a matter of routine. When he asked for her name she said only one word; it was Hawke.

Sebastian's face was grim when he answered her plea. The sick feeling in his stomach was insistent now, the faint beginnings of an ache behind his eyes though he did not know if that was not because he was loathe to have this conversation yet again. "I am sorry, but I know now there can be no peace until those who would do evil know that retribution for their misdeeds will be sure and swift. I am not blind to the risk involved with that. I intend to help her make it so."

He intended to do more than that. Meeting Hawke and following her had shown him the ugly truth, that things had changed much in the years he spent behind the walls of the Chantry and little for the better. He believed once that it was enough to be a sympathetic ear, to give bread to the hungry and to comfort the sick. With her he saw that all he had done was offer platitudes and bandages, flimsy gauze to hide the festering rot of a broken city underneath. Hawke offered something different. She heard the problems of people and she acted, standing for them against the taint and corruption in Kirkwall through sheer force of will and often at the expense of her own peril. It stirred something in him. Accident of birth had given him a title but he was never meant to rule. Cruel twist of fate had changed that, offering him the choice to prove he might be greater than his illicit past, more than a Chantry Brother. He could return to the country of his birth and become shepard to a nation, be a just leader in the tradition of his forebears. He could help Starkhaven in his own way. Hawke had made him believe it was possible.

"Then I can only continue to pray that someday you will someday see reason." She said with sadness. "But this is not why I called you here. I have a Sister in need of an escort after service this evening. I promised her excellent company, so I would have you see her safely to her ship back to the Gallows. Meet her at main doors after service." It was likely to be a miserable task, at least an hour walk on what was likely to be a humid night but he was too preoccupied to protest now, a fresh wave of nausea clawing at him.

"As you wish, Your Grace." He rushed. "May I take my leave?" She gave him a strange look but nodded and waved him away. He stood, bowing again and then exited. The moment the door closed behind him he was moving with haste down the hallway toward the entrance to the garden at the end of the corridor. He stepped into the garden and was sick into the bushes, no longer able to fight the bile climbing in his throat. He was grateful there was no one around to bear witness to it.

He went back to his room, feeling tired though he had risen not that long ago, certain now he was unwell. It was an inconvenient time to be ill, still so many preparations to be made before his trip and now and now a charge to chaperone. He allowed himself that another hour or two of sleep might do him good.

He woke only just in time for the evening Chant.

~~~

Emma gave her own account to Varric over cards. Her version of events was no more honest than Merrill's had been, though Emma's lies were of omission rather than exaggeration. She said nothing of what Sebastian told her he was planning to do. She did not feel like it was her news to share. More than that he had faded from the conversation at last. The whiskey was starting to do its work and for the first time all day she felt relaxed. She was starting to wonder why she had quit drinking in the first place.

"I don't know, Hawke. It's hard to trace a band of mercs after you go and do something like that." He said to her as he finished dealing.

She picked up her cards and looked at them. "They were all carrying good steel. Better than what the Carta's been pushing in Darktown lately, anyway. Someone would have to know about a purchase of that size. Someone had to pay all of those people. Right? Are you a spymaster or aren't you?"

"You wound me. I didn't say I couldn't do it, I just said it's going to be hard since they're all, you know, dead."

Norah appeared at the table just then, setting another drink down on in front of her. Emma looked up at the woman in confusion.

"What's this? I didn't ask for another." She said, though now that it was there she decided she had no intention of sending it back.

Norah shrugged. "Man at the bar bought you a drink." She said, jerking her thumb in that direction before she moved on.

Emma turned to get a look at her unexpected benefactor. There was a man standing there, and she noted at once he was too well dressed to be a local. He was unarmed. A merchant perhaps, or a nobleman's son slumming for the night, if she had to guess. He had short cropped blonde hair and a handsome face, though as she appraised him she guessed he was at least a head shorter than she. The man caught her gaze and raised his own drink in salute, giving her a winning smile. She'd done much worse for herself. She waved in acknowledgement but didn't smile back and then turned back to her cards. 

She had a good hand and considered her bet. "Fifty." She announced, throwing the coins into the pot, looked up when no one said anything. They were all staring at her.

"What?" She asked. 

"Aren't you going to go and talk to him at least? He looks delicious." Isabela said, openly leering at the man, lower lip caught between her teeth.

"He's very handsome." Merrill agreed with her.

"I'm not interested." Emma said and she took a pull of the drink.

"Then let's make it interesting. Five sovereigns says I can take him home before you can." Isabela challenged, already reaching to adjust the ties of her short white shift as they strained against her ample cleavage. "Or don't you enjoy the company of men anymore?" She asked with a sly grin.

"He's not my type."

"No, he isn't." Varric feigned sympathy. "He isn't a blue eyed prig from Starkhaven at all."

"Will you fucking knock it off with that already?" She said sharply. "I told you-" She stopped and looked back at the man again. The whiskey had taken its hold, her mind hazy at the edges, her better judgment fraying.

She made an awful decision.

"I'll prove to you there is nothing going on between Sebastian and I." She declared, a glint of determination in her stormy eyes. "Five Sovereigns you said? Ten says I'll have him back to Varric's room in an hour.

Isabela clapped her hands in delight as Varric gave an exclamation of protest. "Why does it have to be my room?"

"Everyone knows the other beds in this place are dirtier than Isabela." She said and Isabela gave her a nasty look as Emma rose from her chair with her drink. She readied herself, stretching her shoulders, smoothing her hair as she set her face into the closest approximation of pleasantry she could muster.

She was going to prove to them they were wrong. She was going to prove it to herself.

Varric chuckled when she was out of earshot. "Hey Rivaini, I've got ten sovereigns that says instead of sleeping with him she ends up punching him in the face."

"You're on, dwarf."

~~~ 

Sebastian's charge was an elderly woman who needed the use of a cane. It served to make their walk take twice as long. He could only believe his task was a punishment for his absence that morning. Sister Belinda, as she introduced herself, was not unpleasant, a kindly and devoted soul, but she liked to talk. Incessantly, and she did so from the moment they left the Chantry.

By the time they were nearing the Lowtown wharf where a ship waited that would ferry her across the harbor he had heard about every coming and going in the Gallows for the last six months at least, interspaced by tangents about how things were in the Kirkwall of her youth. His sense of chivalry left him helpless to do anything but indulge her, forcing himself to remain attentive and engaged as she prattled on. He felt miserable. Though he had not been sick again the ache that had started in the study that afternoon was spreading, settling deep into his limbs. His armor, still damaged though he had fixed it best he could, felt twice as heavy as it ever did.

"Are you well, Brother Sebastian?" He realized she was speaking to him. "You look as though you might be ill."

Sebastian straightened his slumping shoulders. "I'm a little out of sorts it seems but I'm fine, thank you. Your concern is an appreciated balm."

"It's this awful heat. I can't remember the last time it's been this hot. It will be a welcome blessing when the rain comes." She said to him and she noticed they were nearing their destination. "My but I've talked your ear off this whole way. You shouldn't have let me do that. Why don't you tell me something about yourself to make it up to me?"

He wanted to tell her he desired quiet but it was not in him to be rude in that way. "What would you like to know?" 

"Let's see. How long have you been in service?"

He did the calculation in his head. "Ten years this Harvestmere. Time does have a way of getting on, does it not?"

She laughed a pleased laugh. "Yes it does, doesn't it? I was an old woman when I came to the Maker, myself. Married by my seventeenth name day and I had forty beautiful years before my Wallace was called to His side." She stole a serrepticious look at him. "Seems a shame you never had a chance for the same. I'm sure a handsome young man like yourself would have made some sweet young thing very happy."

"I took my vows of my own will." The words were automatic, more terse than he could help. She had struck a nerve, a raw part of himself, conjuring a vision in his mind of the woman who would only have scowled at being associated with the idea of a sweet young thing. He could see Hawke as she was now, armor tailored to fit the long beautiful lines of her figure, the very definition of breathtaking.

"Of course. You will have to forgive an old woman her foibles, dear." Sister Belinda assured him. He murmured an assent but he was beyond feigning attentiveness any longer.

If her deeds inspired him to take back his legacy it was the quiet moments in between where he found himself inexplicably but irrevocably drawn to Emma Hawke. At first he denied it. He had been wanton in his youth, an empty heart but for want of idle pleasure and he was no stranger to the fickle whims of desire. It only persisted, fueled by afternoons they should not have spent together but did, one of them seeking the other out for training in the barracks at the Keep, or for company on an errand often curiously lacking a destination and they would spend hours wandering the city. In that time she had become something other than Hawke to him, just Emma, sometimes infuriatingly insolent, stubborn to a fault but always genuine, brave, and selfless, placing all others before herself.

Then came the dreams, hounding his sleep, tantalizing visions that left him aching for her. The contrast of her fair skin against his, pressed together, the cries he would draw from her, one of her impossibly long legs wrapped around his hip, pulling him closer to her as he...

He could no longer deny it but he would not think of it. He couldn't. Couldn't he?

To retake Starkhaven he would have to forsake his vows.

They reached the wharf and Sebastian saw Sister Belinda off with an exchange of the appropriate pleasantries. He waited until the small ship pushed away from the dock before he started to make his way back.

As he made his way through the twisting streets of Lowtown he considered his predicament, his angst a preferable distraction to the pounding that had started in his head, pulsing in time with the beat of his heart. He didn't know how to tell her. She admired and respected his devotion to his faith, the vows he had taken. He feared it would disappoint her, to discover that in the end he was weak, that she had made him so. The night before had only served to underscore the foolish game he was playing. She felt guilt for what had happened to him and it broke him, unable to help himself from reaching for her, wanting her close to him. He told her the truth and she had pulled away from him, offering him nothing more than her blades.

He let her go when he knew should have told her it wasn't her blades he wanted at all but her, all of her.

Sebastian reached a set of stairs and started to climb, each step a greater burden than the last, unhappy and exhausted. When he reached the top step something inside him snapped. Everything started to spin, overpowering veritgo, and the ache in his body blossomed into an excruciating surge of pain and he could not help the groan that escaped him as he braced himself against the wall of the building beside him to keep from falling. He felt faint, could feel the beckon of oblivion and he had precious little time before he knew he would succumb to it. He would never make it back to the Chantry.

Frantic, searching his surroundings, unable to see straight and nothing looked familiar, fear rising in him that he was going to pass out in the street in the middle of Lowtown alone at night until at last he saw the suspended outline in the distance and he managed a silent prayer of thanks.

He was only steps away from The Hanged Man.

He reached down for every last bit of strength he had left as he forced himself forward, each step fresh agony, the pain unraveling his mind and when he stumbled through the door of the tavern he cried out the only name he could still recall.

~~~

Guard Captain Aveline Vallen entered The Hanged Man just as the night was hitting full swing. A large imposing woman in heavy plate armor with a head of flaming red hair and a stern disposition, more than a few of the less reputable patrons in the tavern made themselves scarce at the sight of her. At the present moment she was exceptionally cross. She had just returned from the Wounded Coast, where she had been called to investigate twenty dead men strewn about just off the main passage back to the city gates.

She'd known who was responsible at once.

She looked around the room and at first she passed over the man and woman standing at the bar, the man whispering something into the woman's ear. It tugged at her and she looked at them again. She couldn't believe what she was seeing. She found Varric and the others and went over to them. They were all watching Hawke.

"What is she up to this time?" She asked, pointing in Hawke's direction.

Isabela only shrugged, a bored look on her face. "Nothing yet. How much longer, Varric?"

"Fifteen minutes. If she's going to make her move she better do it soon." He muttered.

"I'm sorry?" Aveline asked, more confused that before.

"Hawke bet Isabela ten sovereigns that she'd get that man into bed with her in less than an hour, and then Varric bet Isabela that Hawke would hit him instead. It's very exciting." Merrill explained to her.

Aveline made a noise of disgust in her throat. "Now I'm sorry I asked. Any of you wouldn't know anything about a pile of dead mercenaries on the Wounded Coast, would you?"

A mischevious smile crossed Varric's face and he patted his hand on an empty chair beside him. "It must be your lucky day, Guard Captain. Have a seat and let me tell you a story..."

Over at the bar Emma's mind was swimming. The man's name was Oliver and he was a merchant from Ansburg. He was even better looking up close but Emma had tired of him in the first fifteen minutes. She knew his type, smug and self-assured. She compensated by drinking even faster.

Oliver was taking notice of it, a dark glint in his eyes as he watched her knock back yet another drink. She could almost see the wheels turning in his head as he kept account of her intake, sure he was doing sordid calculations as to how her inebriation was improving his chances.

"I can't believe such a stunning creature isn't spoken for." He flattered her.

Drunk as she was Emma could only snort at the sentiment. "You might not say that if you knew me better."

"Nonsense. I'm sure any man in this city would want you." He said, his voice dropping lower as his fingers trailed down the line of her arm that leaned against the bar, holding her drink. She sensed he was about to make his move.

She didn't stop him, her mind wandering. "Not all of them." She said more to herself than to him.

"No? Their loss then." He breathed, before he leaned in and pressed his lips against the skin right where her jaw met her throat.

Emma closed her eyes, and she was lost.

It had less than nothing to do with Oliver. Unbound by the heady kick of liquor coursing through her blood her imagination took hold of her, making it so easy to pretend that the lips at her throat were _his_. It made her lean into the caress, the rush exquisite as she imagined it was Sebastian that was kissing her, that it was his hands now running up her sides. A false note when Oliver brushed one hand across her skin, his merchant hands too smooth, lacking the callouses she knew there should be and she pulled it away, returning it to her side. Lips traveled up the line of her jaw, towards the soft skin behind her ear and she shivered, surrendering to the impossible fantasy again, too good to care that it wasn't right. Instead she was reaching for the sound she was desperate to hear, picturing the way Sebastian would bend his head to bring his mouth to her ear, breath hot against the shell of it, that intoxicating voice thick with need when he moaned-

" _Emma!_ "

Her eyes snapped open, her reaction immediate, shoving Oliver away from her without ceremony. She hadn't imagined it, the desperate cry that cut through the din in the tavern. _It can't be._ She pushed off the bar, her impaired equilibrium struggling to find its center and she swayed before she let the momentum carry her forward, towards the entrance, the source of the cry, the crowd thick ahead of her. Her heart was beating faster, a faint buzzing in her ears and her skin tingled, the prickle of anticipation.

Fingers dug hard into her skin as Oliver grabbed her by the back of her arm, turning her back towards him and spilling the drink she was still holding. "Where do you think you're going?"

"Let me go." Emma warned him but he didn't relinquish his grip, pulling her against him, trying to force her mouth to his as he groped at her, an unfortunate mistake. Emma pushed hard against his chest, creating just the space she needed and she slugged him hard in the jaw with her fist. Oliver dropped to the floor in a heap.

The throng starting to stare at her now but she was oblivious, flexing her aching fingers before she turned again.

Every fiber of her being tensed, freezing her where she stood, the empty glass slipping from her fingers as her eyes widened in surprise and then alarm. The crowd in front of her had parted.

Sebastian stood before her. _Wrong._ _**Wrong.**_ Peals of warning ringing in her head, glass shattering against stone in the crushing silence of the tavern. He trembled, shoulders rounded forward and there was pain written across his face, the color in his cheeks ashen and cold. His eyes found hers, a spark of recognition and then they were listless, devoid of their light, the wrong shade of blue.

"Emma." The relief in his voice was palpable when he said her name again. Emma tried to speak but her voice was gone and there was to be no time to find it. He made one step towards her and his knees buckled.

People gasped, broken glass crunched underfoot as she lunged without hesitation, her heart in her throat, reaching for him as he crumbled with a frightening suddenness. Balance ruined by drink her motion was bereft of grace, the angle misjudged, and when Sebastian fell against her the pointed front of his chest plate struck her face so hard Emma saw stars before she blacked out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is two months later and 2500 words longer than I intended it to be, but it's finally done.
> 
> This chapter was a crisis of confidence for me because I've always felt that if this chapter wasn't just right everything that follows it will just be overwrought melodramatic dreck.
> 
> For everyone who left kudos or hit subscribe, thanks for keeping me motivated and honest. Sorry it took so long. I hope it was worth the wait!


	5. Tremor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian's dramatic arrival at The Hanged Man is only the beginning.

## 

Chapter 5

### 

Tremor

"Wh....e go....tel...er?"

"..ust le.....o me...ink she's....ing to...wke?"

Muffled noises, murky and a long way off, were the first thing that told Emma she was waking up. By degrees she was coming back to herself. She was flat on her back and there were bits of something sharp digging into her side. She shifted away from it but didn't open her eyes.

"Hawke?"

It was Varric's voice, accompanied by a shake of her shoulder. Still unable to manage more than a half coherent thought she simply grunted in acknowledgement and opened her eyes at last with reluctance. She regretted it at once, unfocused disembodied faces looming over her in multiple and swaying like the pitch and roll of the sea. Turning away she squeezed them shut again.

Her respite was to be short lived. "Come on Hawke, rise and shine." Varric's mellifluous tone, now very loud in her ear, was followed by a more insistent shake. Her arm swept up to push him away and she pried open one eye this time. There were only two faces above her now.

"Slowly, _Lethallan_." Merrill encouraged her.

Now roused Emma ignored the suggestion as a matter of course, pushing herself up into a sitting position. The change in orientation was wretched, leaving her dizzy and mindful of a pounding in her head. Clearer now but her vision still swam, thoughts jumbled and hazy but she decided it was her face that ached worst of all, sticky and wet. She reached up, tentative fingers brushing against the center of the ache and she hissed at the pain the pressure brought and yanked back her hand to find blood.

That was what brought her back to herself, staring at it, pangs of disquiet revived as her scattered memories started to piece themselves back together again, a flash of washed out blue and bright white stars before it had gone dark. She looked around, frantic now, but she was alone on the floor.

"Sebastian...where...?" She asked, trying to get to her feet.

The dwarf and the elf crouched on either side of her exchanged a knowing look. "He's all right, everything is fine." Varric assured her but it did nothing to slow her attempt to rise.

Broken glass, the remnants of her glass and the bits that had been digging into her, crunched under foot as she almost made it before her legs let her know they would not yet suffer to hold her by giving way and she crashed back down hard to her knees, a litany of tense profanity spilling from her.

"Hey, take it easy." Varric admonished. "You just broke a man's fall with your face, shouldn't that satisfy your quota for bat shit crazy for one day? Did you not hear the part where I said everything is fine?"

"Fine?" She echoed back in disbelief. _Not fine. Can't be fine. Wrong._ Undeterred she spied a table close by and reached for it to pull herself up.

"He's telling the truth, Hawke." Merrill pleaded as she watched Emma struggle to haul herself upright. "Sebastian isn't hurt, he just, um, fainted, I guess you might say? Aveline is with him. Isabela went to go get Anders, they'll be here soon. You should be still, your head..."

"Later. Tell me where he is." Emma growled. Nothing they said would sway her, she had to see him for herself.

The table she clung to was occupied, its inhabitants gawking at the disheveled woman rising up before them. She all but snarled at them, conjuring an acid retort to stop their staring before it struck her. Looking around again, with greater awareness this time it confirmed her sinking realization that they were not the only ones. She was the center of attention, aftermath of a spectacle. _Andraste's ass._ She wobbled dangerously, fingernails digging into the wood to steady herself, shaky limbs and fraying nerves alike. They would not see her falter again. 

"Tell me!" She snapped at Varric and Merrill, when they made no immediate reply.

With a well practiced sigh of resignation Varric motioned with his head towards the stairs that led to the lodgings at the back of the tavern. She knew just what that meant and without any further discussion Emma let go of the table.

Determination made up for what she lacked in balance and she did not fall, her gait not quite even but sure. She started for the stairs without waiting for the others, the long lines of her neck straight and stiff with her head held high in willful ignorance of the stares as the rabble parted before her, their chatter drowned out by the rush of blood pounding in her ears.

Up the stairs and down the corridor she staggered. Once free of prying eyes one lithe arm shot out to bear some of her weight against the wall, old plaster flaking off beneath her fingertips but she was oblivious to all else save the heavy oak door straight ahead at the end of the dingy hall and what she might find within. It was the door to Varric's suite. When she reached it her hand went to the heavy brass knob, a twist of her wrist and it swung open without a sound, tension ratcheted to its highest when she heard nothing within and then...

"Maker forgive me, what have I done to you?" The familiar Starkhaven brogue was rife with apology.

She leaned heavily against the doorframe, in relief but also because she realized then just how dizzy she still was. Sebastian was sitting in one of a pair of high backed leather armchairs that were set in front of the large hearth in Varric's sitting room.

"I'm so sorry, I..." He was staring at her, horror on his face and he tried to rise but Aveline was there as well and she pushed him back into the chair

"I think it's best you stay where you are." She told him and then approached Emma herself. "Hawke, your face..."

"It's fine. I'm fine." She insisted breathlessly, staring back at Sebastian. _Everything is fine._ That was what Varric had told her and whatever she thought she'd seen, whatever she thought she knew she couldn't deny it appeared to be true. Sebastian seemed present in mind, only concern and remorse now where before she was certain she had seen nothing but anguish.

_Again? How could this happen again?_

Emma wasn't sure what she had expected to discover when she barged into the suite but this wasn't it, a jarring lack of calamity. Mindless anxiety had carried her here, apprehension that gripped so tight it left room for nothing else inside her but now in the calm and sober quiet there was space. Too much space for too many thoughts.

"Are you just going to stand there all night?" She started when Varric called out from the hall. Still standing in the doorway, slack jawed and surely staring like some sort of dullard, drunk and disheveled, chunks of her dark hair hanging in her face stiff with blood.

 _Everything is fine._ Over and over, like a mantra.

Emma stumbled out of the doorway and into the suite, letting the others in behind her. Varric disappeared into the rooms at the back of his suite while Merrill gravitated towards the large comfortable chair at Varric's desk, resting her staff against the wall as she settled herself with a little sigh. Before Emma made it very far Aveline intercepted her deftly, shepherding her towards the other empty chair opposite Sebastian.

"Sit." She ordered and in such a state Emma did as she was told, sinking down into the plush leather cushions without comment or protest.

It was all almost normal. Unhurried, without any of the urgency she'd felt when she'd dragged herself off the floor of the bar. As the initial wave of relief ebbed away it was starting to feel oppressive, chafing at her. Twice in as many days she'd now found herself at such a loss, dignity in tatters and her practiced indifference set to ruin. All because of _him_.

Too much space for too many thoughts and it didn't take very long at all for the first inkling of darkness to creep in, the bitter whisper of resentment.

 _Everything is fine._ She closed her eyes, breathed in deep and tried to keep herself from the brink she could sense was not far off.

The sharp stab of pain that followed wasn't fine, nor any help to her state of mind, something damp and a little rough pressed against her face with an ungentle hand. "Ow. Fucking ow!" Emma yelped, shrinking back farther into the chair to escape. She opened her eyes to find Aveline standing very close. "What do you think you're doing?" She glared up at the large red-headed woman looming over her.

"You're bleeding on Varric's chair." She told her, holding out a blood stained scrap of cloth for illustration.

Emma snatched it away from her. "You guard furniture now as well, do you? You could have just said so, I can do it myself." She huffed, wadding up the linen and pressing it against her face. For having complained she was even less gentle with herself than Aveline had been.

"It was a bit on purpose as well. Spent all bloody afternoon cleaning up after you." The Guard Captain's voice became sharp with reproach.

"I didn't start it with them." Emma said defensively.

"So I heard. Varric told me about it while you were...absorbed in your choice of entertainment for the evening."

Emma winced. The inflection of it was bad enough but she was inwardly relieved that Aveline Vallen, proud and noble and Ferelden sensibility through and through, lacked the gall to have said _getting piss drunk and necking with a strange man_ instead, as she would have done. She'd told Sebastian she had finished with all that and she had been, until that very night. Not long before it seemed a decision without consequence, save for the hangover she could already feel starting to take hold. Sebastian never came to The Hanged Man if he could help it. But now...

 _Why does that matter?_ The question seemed obvious but she couldn't deny it did.

"...have any idea how much paperwork I'll have to do?" Aveline had apparently been lecturing all the while. Emma had heard it all before. "I ought to haul you all off to the keep for questioning. You and Fenris and Merrill..." She gave Sebastian a look that bordered on suspicion, "and you. Just how does a Chantry brother come to pass out in a tavern late at night, exactly?"

"I'm afraid I'm not entirely sure myself, but if you're suggesting that I was indisposed because I was engaged in some sort of debauchery I'm afraid I'll have to leave you disappointed, Guard Captain." Sebastian answered apologetically.

"You really mean to say that you don't know why this happened?" Emma turned to him.

He had no obvious injuries, nothing to suggest he'd been in an altercation of some kind, although he was for some reason wearing his armor. There was nothing glaring but there were little things that bothered her, tiny impulses of unease set to war with her simmering wrath. He looked exhausted. There was a sliver of dark stubble along the line of his jaw; he'd missed a spot shaving. It wasn't like him at all, so meticulous in his habits. The sun rose and set in time to the routine of Sebastian Vael. On any given day, at any given time, Emma knew where she could find him and what he would be doing. Never a button or buckle undone, never an auburn hair out of place on his head, her oasis of order amidst the chaos.

It made the fact of his arrival looking a little bit unkempt all the more troubling. Her eyes fell on a fresh patch of plaster where the bolt hole had been, grasping for some kind of explanation. "It's because of what happened last night, isn't it?" Less of a question and more an accusation. "you were hurt worse than you let on last night, aren't you? I told you that you needed to see Anders."

"You think that I'm concealing an injury from you? Why would I do such a thing?" Sebastian asked, confused by the notion.

"It's what I would do. She's insufferable when she's right." Aveline muttered under her breath.

Emma made a rude face at her but continued her interrogation. "What else could it be?"

He didn't offer any explanation, didn't say anything at all, just kept looking at her with that same sorry expression on his face and the tumult inside her boiled over.

"Say something!" She demanded much louder than was necessary.

"I said I don't know." He snapped, her frustration giving rise to his own inner turmoil, yanking its ugly head above the veneer of his apparent calm.

If she'd had the presence of mind, it would have been the moment when Emma would have understood that her own pride might not have been the only victim of the scene back in the bar. It wasn't to be. The moment gone as soon as it had come, Sebastian's calm restored and he sighed.

"Forgive me, that was badly spoken. What happened yesterday, that's not what it is." He stretched his shoulders, testing his range of motion. "It's only sore now. Burns a little, maybe. Truth is I haven't felt myself all day." He didn't elaborate. "I've been pushing myself too hard, I think, what with preparations for my trip and my responsibilities at the Chantry and then last night...I don't think it's anything serious. You shouldn't worry about me." He tried a wan smile that didn't quite resonate in his eyes. "I am sorry, Hawke. Truly."

"That's an interesting way you have of apologizing, Choir Boy." Varric appeared at Emma's side with a flask in hand, smooth glass filled with a murky liquid. She was wary at once of the mischief she sensed in him. "Here, drink this. It'll take the edge off." He told her and held out the vessel.

Tossing aside the blood soaked rag Emma took it from him, raising it to sniff experimentally. _Elfroot._ She hated Elfroot. She drank it anyway, the foul taste still preferable to the hammering in her skull.

"Is it?" Sebastian asked with brows raised, not following him.

"Yes. You said, 'I'm sorry _Hawke._ ' Why didn't you call her Emma?"

Before Sebastian could respond or even react there was an outburst of wracking coughs. Emma choked on the tonic, deep barking gasps filling the suite. Though she remembered well enough the broad details of what had happened her recollection still lacked nuance, sounds and details stripped away, maybe never to return. But when Varric said her given name it shook loose the memory, her impure thoughts and the sudden call of her name through the din in the tavern and then quieter when he found her. There was no denying it this time.

If she hoped for an answer to the question she would have to wait, as a different truth was about to come to light instead.

"I don't think you should have given her any more to drink, she's already had quite a lot." Merrill said with a frown from her place at the desk.

"It isn't liquor, Daisy." Varric explained cheerfully. "Nothing like a shock to make it go down the wrong way, eh Hawke?" He said with a wry chuckle, clapping her on the back with a firm hand as she sat doubled over, trying to ease the burning in her chest. "Hey, did you get blood on my chair?"

"That's about to be the least of your problems." She croaked in feeble menace when at last she was able but the damage was already done.

"Have you been drinking?" Sebastian leaned forward over the arm of the chair towards her. He must have found what he sought; after a moment he leaned back looking surprised and a little taken aback. "Are you drunk?"

"We're not talking about me." Emma tried to protest as she straightened up. "You still haven't said-"

"Answer my question, Hawke." He would not be deterred.

 _Andraste's ass._ Emma wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and set down the empty flask, considering her options. She decided there was no way around it. "Fine. Yes and obviously not very, if you have to ask." She nestled herself back into the crook of the chair. "Are you satisfied?"

He wasn't. "Why? Why would you turn back to drink? If there's been some trouble, something I might have done to help keep you from it..."

It didn't surprise her, the fuss he was making. It was no secret that they shared the common experience of both having almost been ruined by an affinity for alcohol in their youth. That the reason for her trouble was him only made his concern irritate her more, salt rubbed in an open wound.

"Well you couldn't' have." She told him. "Besides, one night of overindulgence hardly qualifies as a return to form." The corners of her mouth twitched with malevolent insolence. "You shouldn't worry about me."

Sebastian started to say something in response but the door swung open then. It was Anders. A tall, lanky man dressed in shabby mage's robes beneath a jacket with molting feathered paldrons, he stood in the doorway, surveying the scene.

He turned around and asked out into the hallway, "I though you said they were both laid out?"

"I did. They were. I never said they were going to stay that way." Isabela's sensual rasp answered before she appeared behind the man. "Andraste's holy shit, look at your _face_." She pushed past him, marveling at Emma. "Oh right. Sorry." She added with a glib wave of her hand as an afterthought at Sebastian.

Emma covered her wound in a defensive motion with a sour look and Isabela shrugged, turning to Sebastian. She looked him up and down, an appraising look on her dark features.

"So what's the matter with you? Doesn't look like there's anything wrong."

"I'm...not sure." Sebastian admitted.

"That so?" Anders considered him with curiosity. "Let's have a look then."

Sebastian shook his head. "No. You'll look after Hawke first. I'll wait." He said firmly.

"Bloody void you will." Emma snapped back at him. "At least I know what happened to me. I'll wait, him first." She told the mage.

Anders stood between the two of them, looking to one and then the other, an immovable object and an unstoppable force, neither of them backing down an inch.

"This is ridiculous." He muttered and with another glance at the both of them he made up his mind and went to Emma. He reached out to her but she pulled away, evading his touch.

"I said-"

"I heard you," Anders said, already out of patience, "but it will only take a moment to close that wound, so sit still and shut up or I'll leave you like that."

Emma made a noise indicating her displeasure but when he reached for her again she stayed put. Anders cupped her chin with one hand, tilting her face this way and that, considering the injury.

"A little farther up and he would've taken your eye out." Isabela observed, leaning over the back of the armchair looking down at them. She sounded very nonchalant about the prospect. "Don't think this means you're off the hook for those ten sovereigns though. A bet is a bet."

Before Emma could protest Anders raised his other hand and she had to close her eyes as the blue light pulsed forth from it, bright even still behind her eyelids. She felt the magic seeping into her skin, a feeling never familiar though she knew it well, invisible hands pulling at her, stretching her rent flesh back together again.

"Then don't forget you can turn around and hand them right to me." Varric called to Isabela. "You should have seen the way that poor sap slunk off after he picked his jaw up off the floor. I tell you, it never gets old."

"I'll give you both whatever you want, just drop it." Emma warned as Anders released her. Her hand went to her face, whole again and the ache subsided.

"It's a pity, really." Isabela went on, ignoring her. "That was the best chance you've had at getting laid in...well, forever, it seems like."

"Isabela!" Emma hollered.

"Oh, you didn't know about Hawke's little date?" Isabela feigned surprise as she caught Sebastian's gobsmacked reaction to that piece of news but her smile was wicked. "He had her at the first drink. And the second. And the sixth. He was handsome, too. Such a waste." Satisfied she sauntered off to plunder Varric's liquor cabinet.

Sebastian opened his mouth and closed it again without saying anything, at a loss, the color draining from his face. "So that's the truth, then." He said finally.

"I don't know what that's supposed to mean." Emma grumbled.

"All of those things you've said all these years, that you put your past behind you. It's all been a lie."

"No!" She denied forcefully. "No it isn't. I meant it all."

"Yet here you are drinking and propositioning strange men for sport." He snarled, angry and bitter.

Emma stared at him. She expected disapproval. Disappointment, even. All she could see in him was anger and with her ire already raised she wasn't going to stand for that.

"What do you know about it? If you want to be on my case about the drinking I'll give you that. I shouldn't have been. The rest of it, though, that's none of your concern. Maybe you haven't noticed but I'm told I'm rather attractive and I'm not beholden to you or anyone else so I'll proposition whoever I like. Like you're one to talk. Seems like every time I turn up at the Chantry there's another flock of starry eyed initiates following you about like the sun shines out of your ass."

Sebastian looked affronted. "Those are holy women who have pledged themselves to the Maker. They aren't-"

"Aren't they?" She cut him off. I've seen those sunburst robes hanging from the hooks at the Rose often enough to know that some of them are. Tell him, Varric."

Varric looked up. He had procured a quill and pen and was writing furiously. "Yeah, if you think I'm getting involved in this you're even crazier than I know you are." He told her.

"Fine. The noblewomen, then." She raised an indelicate eyebrow. "I'm sure it's just a coincidence they're all seized by religious fervor just when it's your day to give confession?"

"You know it is my duty as a sworn Brother to offer guidance to those who seek it." He said tersely.

Emma rested her elbows on the arm of the chair as she glared at him. "Right. Your duty. How convenient it must be for a man of your proclivities to have ended up in a place where duty involves so many women that want your _guidance_."

Fierce blue eyes narrowed in contempt. "Are you questioning my honor?"

She shrugged. "Why not? You don't seem to have any trouble questioning mine."

"It isn't any trouble when you've been carrying on like a drunken harlot."

That did it. Emma sprang to her feet, seething. "A drunken harlot? You stuck up, sanctimonious son of a bitch!" She shouted.

"Better that than an ill-mannered, obstinate guttersnipe!" He roared back at her, the cultured, precise lilt of his accent thickened by his fury until he was barely comprehensible.

There were both on their feet now, all pretense of decorum forgotten as they devolved into hurling insults at the other. A study in opposites, Sebastian's hands balled into fists at his sides, jaw clenched and fire in his eyes, a stark contrast to Emma's utter stillness, her arms crossed against her chest, demeanor as cold as the darkest winter night.

"I think that's enough." It was Aveline that tried to intervene at last, in her most authoritative voice.

"No, it isn't and stay out of it." Emma seethed before she rounded back on Sebastian. "You've got some fucking nerve. You drank and rutted your way through half of Thedas. The Prince of Starkhaven never met a hole he wouldn't stick his cock in once he'd had enough to drink, that's what they'll still tell you in every shithole tavern from here to Antiva if you ask. But your sit there and call me a drunken harlot."

"I serve penance every day for that. It's not the man I want to be. It's not what you should want to be, you deserve better."

"And you get to decide that, do you? It's all well and good for you that your bloody vow cured you of the evil of desire, the rest of us just have to make do."

"I still know desire." He said quietly, almost a whisper as the tension left him. "The want of a touch, or a kiss, to know the feel of another's skin, the taste of it. But I said the words, I will honor my oath until I am released of it. You are free to have whatever is that your want and yet-"

"And yet I am no more free than you. Don't you dare to presume you think you know my heart, Sebastian Vael." She gritted her teeth, fighting the shiver that ran the length of her spine. 

"You're right. I don't." There was nothing else to be said. Sebastian nodded, his face set in grim resignation as he went and picked up his bow from where it rested against the chair. "I should go. I shouldn't be here."

"You need to be looked at." Anders protested.

"Let him go if he wants. He can let Andraste keep him from falling on his face next time he feels faint for all I care." Emma turned away, going to the hearth and resting her hands against the mantle, head bowed between her outstretched arms. She felt weary and sick.

"Thank you but I'll have someone see to me at the Chantry. Good night to you all, I'm sorry to have...b-been...an imposition." His voice faltered, catching on the word.

Emma lifted her head, the hair on the back of neck standing on end.

 _Everything is fine._ The last gasp of the feeble notion. Nothing had ever been farther from the truth.

She heard the creak of a chair, someone rising to their feet. "You don't seem well, you need to sit down." Anders urged.

"You look like shit Vael, you should do what he says."

"It's nothing...it's... _Maker, it burns."_

Emma turned to see Sebastian go down with a crash, and then a blur of feathered paldrons as Anders went to his side. Everyone was on their feet, watching the mage as his magic pulsed forth, ghosting over the unconscious figure as he scolded him. "You stupid, prideful- Oh, fuck me." He exclaimed. The magic dissipated suddenly and his head shot up. He leaned over Sebastian, pushing against the heavy table they were up against but it didn't budge.

"Back!" The mage barked. "Get this fucking table back now!" His hands went to his throat, working to undo chains that secured his cloak as the table was pulled back.

Slow at first Sebastian was starting to shake, at first no more than a slight tremor of the arm but with each spasm it was growing in intensity. Echoes of exclamation turning to dismay as the ghastly scene played out. There was a sickening crack of skull against stone, and then again when his neck jerked up and his head slammed against the floor before Anders could get his cloak off and under Sebastian's head to cushion against the blows.

Emma stood stunned at first, mind reeling in abject horror. There was only one thing she could think to do. _Make it stop._ Someone was sobbing, it might have been her, but it all felt so far away, she felt so far away from herself it hardly seemed to matter, the only thing that mattered that she put an end it to. She lurched forward towards Sebastian as though possessed. She would make it stop, by force if that was what it took, hold him down with all her strength as though it he were still it would all be right again.

Plate metal scraping and banging now as Sebastian twitched and shuddered with greater violence, discord rising in a haunting crescendo. Anders caught her by the wrist before she could do anything, stopping her.

"No! Don't touch him!" He shouted over the din, shattering her resolve, what little courage she clung to abandoning her. She sank to her knees, surrendered, her free hand covering her mouth to stifle the terrified wail she could no longer keep from clawing its way out of her throat.

Almost as soon as it had started the rattle peaked and slowed and Anders started issuing orders with the ruthless efficiency of a seasoned military officer. "Aveline, Isabela, here. Get his armor off. If it happens again it will save us from the racket." He looked up and found Varric. "We have to get him up. Have you got any stamina draughts? We'll need them all." He added after the dwarf nodded in assent.

"Sure." Varric's voice thick with shock. He untangled himself from Merrill, who clung to him, still sniffling. "It's all right, Daisy. It's over. Come on, help me get the flasks." He told her gently and led her from the room.

Sebastian's spaulder landed in front of Emma, battered and scuffed from its brutal meetings with the ground, the pieces of his armor being discarded haphazardly as they were removed. She stared at it and then back at Sebastian. He lay in a ruined heap, senseless, an excess of saliva draining from his open mouth and pooling beneath his cheek. His eyelids fluttered and he groaned, faint and broken.

"Sebastian." Emma brushed the spaulder aside, scrambling towards him on hands and knees. Panic tearing at her, choking her, stealing the air from her lungs. "Look at me, Sebastian. Open your eyes." Each word a more desperate plea than the last, teetering on the verge of hysteria when he didn't respond.

She looked up at the grim faces around her, looked at Anders. "What's happening to him? Tell me what's happening to him!"

The answer was as simple as it was terrible and Anders made no attempt to soften the impact of it. "There's poison in his blood and it's killing him." He got up from the floor and went to Varric's desk, rummaging until he found a quill and ink. He located a scrap of parchment and scribbled hasty notes.

"There's no time to waste." He said, coming back across the room and pulling Emma to her feet, shoving the folded parchment into her hand. "Hawke." He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her hard.

Pale and shaking, she flinched at the vehemence in his tone, wide wounded gray eyes rising at last to meet his stern look. "I need your Mother's help, that will get her started. You have to hurry. We'll not be far behind."

He led her to the doorway and she looked back. Varric had returned with the draughts and they had started the unpleasant task of forcing them into a semi-concious man.

"Hush now sweet thing, only a little more. There's a good lad." Isabela soothed, brushing the hair back off Sebatian's brow even as she was holding his head up and still. He was half-awake now, disoriented and fighting their ministrations. Struggling with wild, wordless cries he gagged and coughed as the amber liquid was poured down his throat bit by bit.

It was the last thing Emma saw before the heavy oak door slammed shut in her face.

Alone she stood perfectly still, the sound of her breathing impossibly loud in the quiet of the hallway as she stared at the grain of the door. Then she turned, steps slow at first but quickening, back down the hallway and then through the bar. She'd already been forgotten and she had to push her way through the crowd, offering no apology to those she shoved aside. Through the door and out into the oppressive heat of the night, open space in front of her now.

The soles of her boots hit the dry dusty dirt of the road and Emma ran. She ran without seeing, her feet leading her by instinct alone, as fast as her legs would carry her under the moonless sky, dark clouds rolling in from over the harbor. She had been told to leave but it felt every bit like running away, fleeing from a reality she could not begin to comprehend. 

_There's poison in his blood and it's killing him._

She had to stop, overcome and overwhelmed, doubling over to deposit the contents of her stomach on to the street: whiskey, elfroot, and fear. She finished and straightened, looking back to the empty dark behind her before she ran on into the night. She could flee but she could not escape.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, a flash of lightning setting the sky alight far out over the swell of the Waking Sea.

The storm was following her home.


	6. The Recalcitrant Rogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma Hawke has been known to be difficult even at the best of times. So now...

## 

Chapter 6

### 

The Recalcitrant Rogue

The skies opened up and the heavens unleashed their fury on Kirkwall. It was the kind of squall that came when the heat lingered too long, a stifling calm building before the storm. Through cracks and crevices its vicious winds screamed in the dark, tearing at shutters and foliage in tandem with the crash of thunder rattling the city to its stones, fearsome bolts of lightning ripping the sky asunder. Rain poured down in crazy sideways sheets, drenching first the elevated perch of Hightown, its stately manors of polished granite, down its wide cobblestone plazas and countless stairways towards the claustrophobic maze of Lowtown situated below. There the streets were dry and dusty, the parched earth greedily taking its fill until they had turned into rivers of mud. The slop dripped down through grates and sewers, one more indignity for the downtrodden who lived in the squalid pits of Darktown beneath the surface to suffer.

Insulated from the storm in Leandra Amell's airy sitting room, the women assembled around her there had almost no notion of such hardship.

"...and I told her, 'Dhevinia, those flowers are _blue_. They're meant to be _indigo_.' Honestly. Maker save us all from the quality of help one finds these days." Went a rather accurate example of their misplaced commiseration.

"Oh, I don't know, I'm quite fond of Bodhan." Leandra all but beamed at the stocky dwarf bustling about the room, freshening drinks with a deft assuredness. "In fact I consider myself most fortunate in that regard."

"The good fortune's all mine, Mistress Amell." Topping off a glass with a practiced turn of the wrist, Bodhan Feddic was nothing if not tirelessly cheery. "Looking after the estate for Messere Hawke is the least I can do after what she did for my boy down in the Deep Roads. Nasty business, that place." He shuddered as if to rid himself of the thought.

As if the heavens were to concur there was a roaring crack of thunder above. Lightning flashed through the windowpanes. Leandra looked out into the dark with a small frown. "Speaking of, has Hawke come home yet?"

"I don't believe so, Mistress. She's gone to the tavern, I wouldn't expect her for a time still." He told her as he returned the bottle of a particularly expensive Orlesian red wine to the cupboard. "If you'll be needing anything else?"

"That will be all, thank you Bodhan." Leandra said and the dwarf bowed to the women before departing.

Almost as soon as the door clicked shut behind him it began. "Leandra, darling, don't you think it's time you were a bit more forceful in encouraging that daughter of yours to act in a manner more befitting her station?" Started the Lady Allegra Masterson, the eldest member of their little social club, a bulbous woman dripping in heirloom diamonds that dazzled in the light of the candelabra. "This business of calling her by her surname..."

"We've always called her that." Leandra said despite the fact there was no longer any _we_ to speak of. "Started off as a bit of a laugh really, she looks so much like me Malcolm took to calling her 'Little Hawke' so that people would know she was his child as well. She didn't stay small for very long but the name stuck all the same." There was a remarkable resemblance between the two women. The same long face set with piercing gray eyes, the same pale pink lips, just a touch too thin perhaps, the same wavy ink black mane through Leandra's hair had long turned to silver. Hawke had her Father's height and his icy disposition, but otherwise the two women were just the same.

"But a young woman of her status hanging about in a filthy Lowtown tavern?" Lady Masterson continued to protest. "I wouldn't stand for it, not one second of it."

"Well, we all know how children can be, don't we Allegra? I have to say, that's a stunning necklace. You really must tell me who your jeweler is." Leandra complimented her innocently, but her brow was raised as she took a sip from her glass. Hawke had only been too happy to inform her recently that the Lady Masterson's son had gotten himself several thousand sovereigns indebted to a ring of particularly impatient Antivan bookmakers and that her diamonds had all recently been replaced with worthless crystal to pay off the debt.

"Another time, perhaps." Lady Masterson answered stiffly, apparently mollified.

"Have you considered what her behavior is doing to her marriage prospects?" A refined, sophisticated voice suggested. It belonged to a severe looking woman, her features pinched and angled in all the wrong places, leaving the inescapable impression of shadow in her face. Lady Johane Harriman toyed with the stem of her wineglass as she needled, "She isn't getting any younger, after all." 

The blow struck home. "I'm well aware of her age thank you." Leandra huffed. "It's not for lack of trying on my part, believe me."

"Yes, precisely, Johane." Lady Masterson struck back into the fray, recovered. "I heard about what happened with the Stanwell boy."

"All the fool had to do was say no." Leandra muttered irritably. She had little control over Hawke but it didn't mean she didn't want the same things for her that any Mother would: happiness, security, a good man for a husband...and children. They lived in a grand and spacious estate after all, far too much space for just the two of them. Too much space for such a small household, she thought, not at all because she was becoming of an age where the prospect of grandchildren to dote upon held more than a passing appeal.

To the unaware it might have seemed an easy proposition. Hawke was intelligent, wealthy, and had reasonably good looks though she did less than nothing to enhance them. Forced to endure all manner of ill-fitting garments over the years because of her height, Hawke's only extravagance since coming into her wealth were her clothes, all expertly tailored to fit her frame. There was not a single feminine garment to be found in the lot. Tunics and trousers, vests and jackets, black leather and silver clasps without so much as a hint of ornament. That and the boots. Emma Hawke owned a baffling collection of boots, in that they all looked the very same.

Then there was her disposition. Willful and proud, master of her own destiny, Hawke would bow to no one and nothing. Necessary attributes for someone who made their way in the world from behind the edge of a blade, for certain, but not so much for a nobleman's wife. Defiant, coarse, and stubborn as a druffalo, she utterly lacked the sort of social grace and gentle touch that such men found desirable.

It all spelled failure for Leandra's efforts. The mentioned incident with the Stanwell boy had been nothing short of a disaster. It had taken months of cajoling and wheedling on her part before Hawke had agreed to meet him, no doubt only to put an end to her nagging. Hawke made her pay dearly for it; after a painful dinner in which she contributed not more than a handful of words to the conversation, she suggested to the man he might want to try sparring with her. The utter fool, either operating under a masculine delusion he could best her, or perhaps that she meant a different sort of sparring, had taken her up on the offer.

Leandra was having difficulty even broaching the subject with any halfway decent family, after word had gotten out about that. She sighed. "And I suppose you've had more success in that area, is that it?"

"Well, now that we're on the subject..." A pleased smile spread across Lady Harriman's face, the conversation apparently steered where she'd wanted. "I should say we're going to have exciting news on that subject soon enough, won't we dearest?"

She was speaking to the waif of a girl seated beside her, her slight frame drowning in layers of delicate crinoline and lace. Flora Harriman was as pretty as a porcelain doll and had all the personality of one, her green eyes as empty as the wan smile perpetually fixed on her face. "Yes, Mother. It's very exciting." She said with muted enthusiasm.

"That's wonderful news. Won't you tell us about him Flora?" Someone asked kindly.

Flora looked to her Mother, flustered and unsure of what to say. "Mother says I'm not to speak of it until-"

"What Flora means to say is that there are still some...details to be worked out." Lady Harriman explained to the others. "It shouldn't be very long now."

And just then there was a commotion from outside of the room, shouting in the hall. " _Get out of my fucking way!_ " A woman's voice roared.

"Please, Mistress, it's not a good idea." A man's voice seemed to plead. "Your Mother is-"

The door exploded open so violently it crashed against the wall behind it and a soaking wet, disheveled figure stumbled into the room with breakneck abandon. "Mother." It shouted, sputtered "It's Ss- _uh_ -" and then froze.

No one spoke. The room full of carefully polished and properly dressed Hightown noblewomen stared at Emma Hawke as she stared back at them, standing amongst them in an increasing puddle of muck as the mud and water dripped from her clothes, her tunic stained with blood. She was breathing hard, panting as she pushed her bedraggled hair out of her face, her color whiter than bone under the flush of exertion, a wild look in her wide eyes.

"Disgraceful." Someone, probably the Lady Masterson, clicked their tongue.

"I'm sorry Mistress, I tried to stop her..." The dwarf bleated apologies to Leandra as he followed into the room after her, wringing his hands.

"It's all right, Bodhan." Leandra quieted his prostrating, not taking her eyes from her daughter as she pushed herself up out of her chair. "If you'll excuse us a moment." She said to the other women as she took Hawke by the elbow and led her from the room.

When they were safely down the hall and out of prying earshot she hissed, "Just what in the name of the Maker is the matter with you?"

"He...he fell and he...shook..." The younger woman, as if in a daze, babbled incomprehensibly between heaving gasps. "...they're coming, you have to help him, _please_." She begged, holding out a damp scrap of paper she'd held clenched in her fist.

Leandra unfolded the soggy note and read the familiar scrawl twice. When she was finished her lips were set in a firm line. "I see." Was all she said. "Bodahn?" She called softly and the dwarf appeared at her side. "It looks as though we'll be having more visitors this evening." She told him. "I'll need one of the guest bedrooms made up. The one closest to my workroom, if you don't mind."

The dwarf bowed. "At once, Mistress." Then he vanished as quickly as he had appeared.

Leandra looked up and down at Hawke. "Go and get yourself cleaned up while I see the ladies out. Then you must tell me everything that you can."

Arrangements in hand she turned on her heel and strode back down the hallway. her mind was already buzzing, beginning to formulate the list of things she could try and what she would need. When she opened the door to the sitting rooms again, he face was perfectly placid as she announced the evening would have to be at an end.

As the women took their leave, only Johane Harriman purred "This was a most delightful evening, Leandra," as she swept out to depart.

~~~

Fenris knocked on the door to Hawke's estate and waited, Varric's news still ringing in his ears. _"It's Vael. He's in a bad way,"_ the dwarf had told him when he answered the harried banging at his door, in the middle of a downpour, before he launched into an explanation that was gravely lacking in his usual embellishment.

On any other night, Bodhan would have been brisk to answer, the always agreeable butler bowing with his customary greeting of _Good Evening, Messere Fenris_ as he saw him in. Tonight there was no answer.

 _"Get over to Hawke's. Vael...I'm no expert but he's a goner."_ Varric said to him before he left almost as soon as he'd arrived, off to the Chantry to tell the Grand Cleric. _"Don't even know how I'm going to explain this to her. Maker's tits, what a disaster."_

That was most telling of all. He'd never known Varric Tethras to be at a loss for words before.

Fenris knocked again with greater insistence and when there was again no answer he tried the heavy brass handle and found the door unlocked. Inside there was no one in sight. Even Hawke's mabari hound was nowhere to be found, missing from her usual post beside the fireplace in the main hall. He glanced around and then unstrapped his sword and set it down, smoothing his rain slicked hair out of his face. The storm had calmed but the rain still fell. He could smell boiling herbs in the air and he decided to let that lead him through the estate. It wasn't long before he could hear voices from an open door down the hall.

"Demon root?" He recognized Anders' voice at once.

"Only if they were incredibly uninspired." A woman answered. It sounded like Hawke's Mother.

"This isn't really the sort of situation that requires artistry, you know."

"Fine. It's a possibility. Next?

"Maker's mercy?" A pause. "It'd be ironic, that."

"If the situation doesn't require artistry it doesn't require irony, either."

"I do like it when you're being- Oh, it's you." Anders tone turned tart, his displeasure evident when he caught sight of Fenris in the doorway. The mage was leaning against the mantle, a large tome cracked open in his hands, facing a table littered with jars of all manner of plants and extracts. Leandra had her back to the door, hard at work with mortar and pestle. A blazing fire roared in the grate, a cauldron nestled within bubbling and emitting a sickly sweet odor. Two tall windows on the opposite side of the room had been thrown open wide, curtains rustling in the brisk stormy breeze blowing in from the garden outside.

Under ordinary circumstances he would have called the mage _abomination_ but he forced himself to settle for mute acknowledgement with a tilt of his head. "Lady Amell." He regarded Leandra.

"Hello Fenris." She waved briefly but barely looked at him, bustling the cauldron from the fire, carefully measuring out its contents into a waiting basin. "A little ice, if you please." She said to Anders, who stepped over and cooled the vessel with a short burst of frost from his palm.

She took the basin and crossed in front of him, his eyes following her to the four poster bed in the center of the room. She set the basin on the table and settled herself on the edge of the bed, next to Sebastian who lay flat on his back on top of the covers, asleep or unconscious. Fenris could not fail to notice the deathly pallor of his complexion, dark circles ringing his closed eyes and bloodless color in his cheeks. He'd been stripped down to his trousers and shirt, a bandage visible on his chest through the open halves of his shirt where it'd been slit open.

Fenris watched Leandra peel back the bandage. "Wound is superficial, not very deep." She noted. "Swelling, redness." She bent her head and sniffed. "No odor. Definitely not Demon root, then." She said with a glance back at Anders.

"I didn't realize you were were a healer, Lady Amell." He said, somewhat taken aback.

"Hardly." She said. "Just a hobby, really." The mixture in the basin had thickened into a paste that she started to apply over Sebastian's wound.

"Leandra is an expert with poisons." Anders told him.

"Compared to you, at any rate. There's no need to advertise." She scolded.

"Can you cure him?" Fenris asked her and her lips pursed, all wryness vanished as she fussed with the bandage.

"Not like this." She said quietly. "If I knew what he's been tainted with, perhaps, but without that all I can do it try to make it easier for him, try to buy more time until..."

"Until those Chantry fools come to fetch him." Anders finished for her.

"You doubt their capability?" Fenris did not like the man but he could not begrudge the mage his skill for healing.

"There's a reason my clinic is always packed to the gills when the Chantry's got three healers of their own." It sounded suspiciously like a boast. "Have you any idea how many poisons there are that would cause a man to have a fit like he's had?"

Fenris glowered. "I gather you're going to tell me."

"Seven. Next to impossible to get the ingredients for two of the antidotes. Another has to be mixed exactly right or it would kill him before the poison has a chance to finish the job. Then there's always the possibility it's been something cooked up special for the occasion..." Anders shrugged. "What I'm telling you is, we've got fuck all to go on and I doubt they'll fare much better. If you've got any last words you want to say to him, I'd suggest you say them now."

Fenris looked around the room again as that sank in. "Where is Hawke?"

"Shut in her room since the others arrived." Leandra told him

Fenris frowned, glanced at Sebastian once more and then without another word he strode off in that direction.

~~~

The edge of the blade slid over the whetstone in smooth, even strokes. A weapon designed to inflict grievous injury it had a sort of beauty to it still, tapered shining steel rising from a handsome sculpted guard, its lines curving gently upward towards its lethal serrated end. The hilt, blood red, was familiar with the long, clever fingers wrapped around it, the leather imprinted with the outline of her hand just so.

It was the routine of sharpening her daggers, the ritual of it, that kept Emma anchored to something that felt like control.

That and the use she had in mind for them when she was finished.

Divested of her soaked attire she had dressed for battle, armored jacket still unclasped as she sat in her bedroom making her preparations. She held the stone in one hand and the blade in the other, its twin resting on the small side table at her elbow, along with their sheaths. At her feet lay a massive beast, a giant brindle colored dog. The dog watched her and was not the only one doing so.

"I can't allow you to do this." Aveline told her, not for the first time. She watched Emma at her ministrations with a wary look on her face.

"I haven't asked for permission. Call your guards and have them try to stop me, if that's what you have to do." Emma replied without taking her eyes from her work, the quiet calm of her voice more unsettling than any noisy wrath could hope to be.

Folding her arms across her chest Aveline straightened to her full height, an imposing presence. "And if I'm the one that tries to stop you?"

Emma paused and looked up. One eyebrow raised she shrugged almost imperceptibly, a silent dare if ever there was, before the chilling scrape of steel filled the silence with an even more deliberate menace.

Aveline sighed and dropped her arms. "Hawke, I know you're upset..."

"I am not upset." Was her flat response, little more than an indication of semantics. There were no proper words for what she was, a discordant tumult of driving purpose and crippling doubt bound together by the focus on her task, her goal. Her mission.

"I know you're upset." Aveline repeated with insistence. "I think it's compromising your judgement."

"I don't care what you think." Emma snapped, a gust of fury rising up in her at last before she settled again. "Something foul has been done to someone close to me." She said, collected and cold once more. "Do you doubt I would be doing the same if it were you? Or any of the others?"

"If I remember correctly I heard you say quite clearly that you didn't care what happened to him, or is that wrong?" Aveline recalled.

Her fingers clenched the hilt of the blade so tight her knuckles went white, Emma was sick with the thought of it, of what happened after. "You've never said anything you didn't mean? He called me a harlot and a guttersnipe."

Aveline scoffed. "And those are names Chantry Brothers use on people all the time. It all seemed very....personal, if you ask me."

"I didn't ask you." Emma growled.

It didn't mean she didn't know exactly what she meant, what Emma was trying with ever fiber of her being not to think about. They'd cost her an entire day, wasted time she was in desperate need of now, her _feelings_. An entire day of nursing her wounded ego and busted pride, over some ill-begotten impossible fantasy.

_But what if it isn't a fantasy?_

She tried not to think about it but it refused to be silent, the uneasy creep of realization as she was forced to examine things she had struggled not to consider. And now...

Aveline sighed, leaned against the empty mantle. "Fine. Let's hear this plan of yours, not that you even know who you're looking for."

"I do." Emma insisted. "What I don't know is their name or their whereabouts. I'll fix that soon enough."

"How? The mercenaries are all dead."

"Those men were never meant to live." Emma said with certainty.

After the shock had worn off, when she had gotten hold of herself again, hindsight had been all too swift in relinquishing the truth to her at last. Poorly trained mercenaries, men felled with ease, not meant to challenge but to confuse. Their corpses strewn about the clearing, creating cover to conceal those that were not dead. Only when their annihilation seemed complete had the real attack taken place.

Only then had a lone figure risen, calling out for clemency even as he held a hidden crossbow primed to fire. A crossbow armed with a bolt that need not more than score a glancing blow to bring to pass its ill intent. The assailant never faltered from his target, never flinched, despite what could only have been sure knowledge he would not survive the attempt. It was a setup, as she had suspected, but now she understood it hadn't been one meant for her.

"There would have been others, means to stay hidden," she explained at last, "to report back that the job had been carried out. This wasn't an accident. It was planned out and intentional."

"Who would want to kill a priest? Unless..." Aveline contemplated.

"Unless they weren't after a priest, that's right." Emma finished for her.

The guard captain narrowed her green eyes. "Does this have to do with Starkhaven?

"I think it does." She could barely bring herself to say it. "I think what happened on the coast was an assassination."

If Aveline looked stern before this did nothing to improve her countenance. "You should stay out of this, Hawke. I know you think you're invincible but if that's what this is, if that's what's happened...they already tried to get you as well, you know." She reminded her. "Stay out of it." She warned again.

"It isn't all they did." Emma ignored her. "They also used me to get to him." When this news didn't elicit a reaction she pressed, "don't you see? They're here Aveline, They're from Kirkwall, whoever is responsible for this, they have to be. Only someone local would know I'd run off on a whim to give aid to a stranger. Only someone from Kirkwall would know he'd be with me if I did. I can find them, I can make them show me how to set things right again," Conviction threaded through every single word she spoke, her righteous bluster to keep herself focused on the thin thread of hope she held fast to, to keep herself from falling into the chasm of despair yawning beneath her feet. To keep herself from having to face the terror lurking down in her guest bedroom.

"And then..." She stopped herself, her hard gray eyes flickering from the blade to Aveline and back again. "I suppose it wouldn't be wise to tell the Captain of the city guard what fate awaits them after that." Finished the blade slid home into its sheath with a snap in ominous finality.

"Then tell me." A rocky voice demanded. The two women turned their heads in unison to find Fenris standing the doorway.

"Maker's Breath, and now you too." Aveline muttered, shaking her head.

"I've been hoping you would turn up." Emma said to him, getting to her feet as she started to fasten the clasps on her jacket. "Have you got your sword? There's work to be done." Was her way of answer.

Fenris nodded in the affirmative. "You have something in mind?"

The last clasp finished Emma tugged at the tail of her coat, straightening it. "There's a Coterie merchant in the Undercity, fancies himself close to a lot of the mercs that pass through." She snatched the harness that held her blades, slinging it over her shoulder. "A sovereign says I can get him to sing before I even have to threaten to cut off his balls."

"You will _not_ go stirring up trouble with the bloody Coterie, do you understand?" Aveline protested valiantly, but to little avail.

"The only ones who need fear anything from us are the ones responsible for this. You know how to see yourself out." Emma informed her. "Ginny, come." She commanded, clicked her tongue and the dog got to her feet, padding after her master obediently as she crossed the room. "I'll be ready in a moment." She said to Fenris and she was gone.

"Are you mad?" Aveline turned on him at once, hissing as her footsteps fell away. "You can't possibly believe you've got a prayer of success, just what in Andraste's flaming sword do you think you're doing?"

"If you want to subdue a wild beast, the easiest way is to tire it out first." He explained calmly.

"Are you trying to suggest I let her rampage across the city unchecked until she's _tired_?"

The elf shook his head. "Perhaps not across the city, but it's never very difficult to find a few criminals about. Think of it as a public service." He could see her beginning to capitulate. "I'll see she doesn't cause any trouble, Aveline." He promised.

Although she could already guess at the answer, she still asked, "What then?"

"That's when I'll tell her she will have to say goodbye." Was his grim reply.


	7. Small Comfort

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some battles can't be fought with weapons.

## 

Chapter 7

### 

Small Comfort

They set off without delay, out into the storm to march along the deserted streets of Hightown. Emma led the way and Fenris followed, stalking close behind. He said nothing, his silence a welcome respite after a cacophony of arguments and angry words, the scrape of plate metal along a hard stone floor. She found calm in the dark, reassurance in the familiar heft of her daggers on her back and the knowledge of a goal to be worked towards. Experience had taught her there were many things she could take at the edge of a blade: freedom, riches, respect, power. If she had won all that, she thought, she could win salvation too.

She turned a corner and came to an abrupt halt, silence broken by a curse uttered under her breath. In front of her the landscape served as a pointed reminder the full breadth of her predicament was hardly as simple as that.

"Is something wrong?" Fenris pulled up beside her.

Emma eyed the towering cathedral in the distance, the grand staircase that led down to a wide open plaza set below. She followed its slope and settled on the outline of a weathered wooden board, a tiny thing set against a backdrop of enormity. In her haste to be on her way she had failed to consider the path she would take to reach her destination and she found herself standing at the edge of the Chantry courtyard.

"No, nothing." She lied and pressed forward.

The Chanter's Board would be empty now, she knew, tended to by a diligent brother or sister that would have hustled out the moment the first raindrop fell, to fetch the notices before they could be ruined by the rain. It made the unbidden memory no less potent, of a fair day long before where it was here she'd seen him for the first time, a tall and regal looking man clad in the most ridiculous armor she'd ever laid eyes on. Kirkwall was a place of limited color, black and brown and gray, with a splash of red for the banners that flew from its ramparts and the blood that too often spilled on its streets; a city full of sullied things. But there he'd stood in plate of shining white, like that of the valiant hero in a child's storybook, pure as the driven snow and so stark it did nothing but demand to be seen.

So she'd watched him from afar and been ensnared, a moth drawn to a flame, because she didn't have to watch very long to see that he _burned_ , up to the fire in his slicked back auburn hair, with passionate fury so palpable it stole her breath away.

His armor was dented, damaged, the last time she'd seen him in the courtyard. Emma knew him then, or thought she did, knew the quiet devoted faith that tempered the fury, most of the time. It was the part she found difficult to reconcile, she with her cynical and jaded disposition, when she'd found she was no less taken by it, couldn't help but admire it. In spite of all the ill that had befallen Sebastian Vael, scandal, exile, tragedy, he had still found something to believe in and strove to be a better man because of it.

He'd pulled her close, the last time, _the last time_ , so close she'd heard the catch in his breath when he'd registered her nearness. Close to his warmth, the only thing that had ever eased the chill in her soul. And those impossible blue eyes, so bright with that inner light had fallen to her mouth, lingered what had seemed a moment more than proper...

It was supposed to be impossible. She was a fighter; a cold hearted rogue. A hard woman wrought of steel, sharp and unromantic, who was not inclined to believe anything she could not see for herself. He was a man of faith, sworn whole by sacred oath to his belief. Royalty, on the path of ascension. The skies would fall before such a union could ever be.

Emma passed through the courtyard fixed on an empty wooden board, pelted by new and frightening possibility as it poured down on her from a storm torn sky blown in by the foul wind of the poisoned end. The light she had so come to cherish was dying, the light that maybe shined for her. Soaked in uncertainty she marched on, undeterred. She found calm in the dark, reassurance in the familiar heft in her daggers on her back, the means to delay a reckoning.

She was a fighter; a cold-hearted rogue. It was the only way she knew how.

~~~

Set beneath the streets of Lowtown to keep refugees and other undesirables away from the rest of the citizenry, the Undercity was a ramshackle collection of hovels and passages carved out of the dirt. It was natural, fertile ground for criminal enterprise to thrive, a shadowy maze where few guards would dare to venture very far, teeming with scores of the lost and the desperate. Up on the surface, it was still relatively rare for anyone to be assaulted without provocation in broad daylight.

There was no daylight in Darktown.

Emma squinted in the dim torchlight as she crouched in front of the door to the shop and considered its lock. New, at least compared to its surroundings, and not inexpensive. She reached for the pick she had jammed through the wet mess of her hair plastered to the back of her neck.

"Breaking it down would be faster." Fenris suggested in a low voice, as he looked down from his post beside her. He stood watch while she worked, propped against the wall of the tunnel next to the door.

"It would also give him warning to escape, if there's another way out." She whispered in retort as though it were the only obvious conclusion. She slipped the pick into the lock and felt for the catch in the tumblers. After a moment she stilled, puzzled. There was no resistance in it at all. She tested the knob and scrambled to her feet. "It isn't locked." She hissed.

Her daggers unleashed in a flash Emma backed away from the door. Fenris pushed himself off the wall, alert. It was late in the night and no man who paid for such a lock would fail to use it. It meant trouble. She set her feet, poised to strike and she gave Fenris a curt nod before he reached for the nob.

The door swung open and Emma dropped her arms at once. Dread blossomed deep in her gut. Fenris looked around the corner and then back.

"Escape seems...unlikely." He informed her, in his normal speaking voice. He strode into the shop. Emma stowed her blades and followed after him.

Inside, the merchant she sought was slumped over his counter, the blade that had ended him still lodged in his chest. Around him the place was in shambles, ransacked and picked apart. The mismatched wooden shelves that lined the walls were bare, what was left of their former contents strewn across the floor in disarray.

"He's not been dead long." Fenris sized up the corpse, the blood painted thick on the counter and the floor around. His sharp green eyes swept the space as he surveyed the wreckage. "It looks like a robbery."

"Or it was made to look like one." Emma brushed past him, rounded the counter and started to rifle through the mess. "There could still be something. A ledger...letters...anything. We'll search it all."

They searched the space from top to bottom, scrutinized the sad living quarters behind it, the narrow cot and a ramshackle table still laid out with the remnants of a sorry supper, starting to spoil. The longer they rummaged without anything to show for their efforts the more anxious Emma felt, the frenetic agitation building with every empty box she touched and meaningless scrap of paper Fenris handed her to read.

"There's nothing here." He declared after they had exhausted every nook and crevice, sifted through every last piece of debris.

Emma looked around. "Maybe there's something we overlooked? Look again."

"You cannot be serious." Fenris objected, brow creased in consternation. "We don't even knew for certain this man had anything to do with Sebastian. This is a fool's errand, we're only wasting time. We should go back to your estate and-"

"I'm not going back." She spoke over him, chin raised in defiance. "Not until I can put things right again."

The look Fenris gave her was grim, the question he asked no less so. "What if you cannot?"

"That is not an option." She snarled through gritted teeth, tension reached its breaking point. If she surrendered in this, admitted it all as the haphazard farce that it had undeniably turned out to be, she knew what remained to be done.

She wasn't ready for it. She would never be ready for _that_.

"We have no suspects and no leads." Fenris continued to give life to the barrage of reason and rationality seemed bent to unhinge her completely. Yet nothing stung worse than to hear his pity. "You must consider it may be the only option." He finished, almost softly.

Still she would not give it outward consideration, even as the truth of it clawed at her insides. "No." Emma shook her head in vigorous denial. "No I won't." Her eyes darted around the shop once more. "If there's nothing here, I'll try somewhere else. There's someone somewhere who knows something and I will find them."

" _Fasta Vass._ " The elf swore loudly, his patience apparently brought to its end. "Sebastian is dying, Hawke."

"And you think I don't fucking know that?" She roared back at him, the cover ripped off what little composure she still had. "Why do you think I came to this, this _shithole_ -" she kicked an empty vessel with the tip of her boot and the crockery smashed against the wall.

"Whazzat?" The reedy, uneasy and unfamiliar voice of a man punctuated the silence that followed, floating in from down the corridor outside the shop. "Did you hear that?" It asked.

"Hear what?" A second voice asked, this one more possessed, deeper.

A third voice chimed in, slow and thick. "Sounds like a row."

Back in the shop Emma looked at Fenris, the open door of the shop and without delay they dove for cover. She dropped down behind the counter as Fenris slipped behind the open door.

"Never mind that. Focus on the job." She heard the man with the deep voice admonish the others.

"But what if something's gone wrong?"

"Nothing's gone wrong. The dirty work is already done. Get in, grab what you can, and get out." Were the instructions given as their footsteps approached, heavy as they neared and then ceased.

Crouched behind the counter Emma pulled one blade from its sheath and she waited, trying to imagine the silent gesticulations that would be exchanged when they came upon the open door. She heard the faint whisper of leather and steel, the slide of a sword being unsheathed. They were coming. Footfalls resumed, a solitary pair, making a poor attempt at stealth. The shadow of a man fell in front of her, the outline of his figure passed and Emma sprang from hiding. She took the man at unawares, one single, swift movement was all she needed to have him at her mercy, her steel pressed against his throat.

"Drop it." She ordered and the sword he held clattered to the ground. She kicked it away. "If you so much as breath without my permission, I will cut you." Emma warned her captive and pressed the edge of the blade more insistently against the vulnerable skin over his windpipe. The greasy, panicked man under her thrall sucked in a breath to hold it. "You may breathe." She permitted, and he exhaled.

"Who the fuck are you?" Emma wrenched her prisoner around with her to face the owner of the deep voice, a squat, burly man with a thick chestnut beard. He and another man, a muscled dullard were standing close to the entrance with weapons at the ready.

"No one you want to concern yourself with." She answered coldly, looking them over. Shabbily dressed thugs, petty criminals more likely than not. She addressed the bearded man who was clearly in charge. "Who killed this man?" She jerked her head towards the merchant and in doing so stole a glance to where Fenris still hid. She knew the silent inquiry he made with eyebrows raised and she blinked twice in response.

The bearded man leered at her, lips curled to expose a decaying grin. "The only thing I'll tell you is which way my cock leans when it stands."

Emma's dagger dropped, the blade listed downward to plunge into the flesh of her hostage's thigh. As he doubled over to cry out she pulled the weapon free, a sharp yank so that the hilt collided with his skull. He sank into a pile and Emma stepped over his unconscious form as she unsheathed her other blade. "Answer my question or I will do worse than that to you." She promised, a naked threat colored with a dark tone.

"Do you think we're afraid of one giant sulking bitch?" He scoffed, unimpressed. "You're still outnumbered, sweetheart." He sneered and turned to his compatriot. "Get her."

Pandemonium broke loose. The two thugs rushed as her with weapons raised to strike as Fenris emerged from behind the door with this sword at the ready. In the small space he could easily have taken out both men in a single strike from his massive blade.

"Get back." He shouted, but Emma didn't listen.

She ignored the direction and stood firm to meet the incoming attack. The moment was hers, the escape she so badly needed from the helplessness eating away at her. Her head was clear when she was locked in mortal combat, time slowed, blows anticipated, avoided, returned in a liquid flow of focus.

Their strikes came fast, too fast, the action a frenzy, a blur. She could find no sanctuary. Cornered and caged, there was no escape. In a blind fury she lashed out but it was a pulse of blue light that saved the day, a sickly squelch and the big man went down. Fenris had abandoned his sword and taken matters into hand.

Horrified the leader of the gang froze, fear in his face at the grisly sight of his fallen fellow. Emma recovered and threw herself at him, knocking them both to the ground. She pinned his arms with her knees and brandished a dagger at him.

"Who killed him?" She screamed, incensed. "Did it have to do with Sebastian Vael?"

"I-it was th-the Coterie." The man sputtered and gasped. "He was c-cutting them out of their take. I don't know anything about anything else. P-please, just don't let him kill me." He begged.

Blade raised for the kill Emma twisted her wrist as it swung home and struck him hard against the side of his head with the pommel. She rolled off of him, sat on the floor with her knees pulled to her chest, a hollow ache spreading through her limbs.

Around her Fenris wasted no time in binding the two unconscious thugs. "Is this finished now?" He asked at last and she gave a single dejected nod in response.

When he finished the knots he looked down at her huddled form and crouched beside her. "It's a foul thing, what's been done." He told her. "Do not mistake my composure for indifference. I am...troubled. Sebastian is a good man and I have no wish to see him perish. But this is not the way." He stood straight. "You have to go and see him, Hawke."

"What is there to see?" She tried to muster insolence but the words came out flat and empty. She knew full well.

"I believe you know." He said and went to the door. "I will go to the barracks and have someone take care of this. Then I will return to your estate. Varric will return from the Chantry before long and we can decide what is to be done." He paused. "Go and make your peace with Sebastian, while there is still time for it."

It was only when he had gone that Emma picked herself up off the ground and like one condemned to meet the gallows she began the trek back to Hightown, to face a reckoning long overdue.

~~~

Only Ginny met her when she arrived back at the estate. Usually buoyant and enthusiastic in her greeting, the dog sensed and mirrored her grimness, waited still as stone on her haunches with a doleful expression as Emma stripped off her gear in her cloak room. She peeled off her gloves, flung them aside carelessly and her bare hands reached for the buckles on the harness that held her blades. She hung them on a hook nearby. Ginny wagged her stubby tail as Emma bestowed the hound with a half-hearted scratch behind the ears before she slipped out of her jacket, let it fall to the floor and left it where it fell. There was a tall looking glass set in the corner, her Mother's idea. Emma looked at the reflection in it and a stricken, exhausted stranger looked back. She moved on through the estate.

As she neared the door to the bedroom where she knew Sebastian lay it opened and her Mother stepped out, laden with a basket full of glass bottles looped over one arm.

"Did you find anything?" Leandra dispersed with a proper greeting as the door clicked shut behind her, the question asked in a quiet register that robbed it of none of its urgency. Emma didn't even get to shake her head before with another look all trace of optimism in her expression vanished.

It only made her more miserable, if such a thing were possible. "How did you know where I'd gone?" She asked and then answered herself. "Aveline." She huffed.

Leandra frowned. "She's very cross with you."

"Tell me something I didn't know." Emma muttered under her breath.

"He asked for you." Leandra told her, head tilted towards the bedroom door. "Quite specifically." She added and Emma felt her blood run cold beneath her Mother's inquisitive consideration.

For her part, she managed to keep her expression neutral. "How is he?"

"Asleep for the moment." Came the brisk reply. "He's being very brave about it."

Emma nodded without saying anything and looked down at the basket. "Are you going somewhere?"

"His poultice will need changing soon enough. I need to go fetch some fresh linen and restock a few herbs."

"Is Anders in there then?"

"No, I sent him off to bed an hour ago at least." It was Leandra's turn to master her expression. Her dalliance with the man wasn't precisely a secret inside the estate, but by unspoken agreement there was never any mention made of it. "Why don't you go and sit with Brother Sebastian while I see to this?" She changed the subject quickly, lifted the basket to illustrate. "I'll not be long." She said and without waiting for any kind of response she hustled off in a swish of skirts, the gentle clink of jostled glass trailing her as she retreated the other way down the hall.

"Wait, I-" Emma called after her but if her Mother heard her she made no sign of it before she vanished out of sight.

Alone in the hallway Emma faced the door, tried to will the twisting of her insides to cease, to no avail. She opened the door and walked into the bedroom.

She couldn't even bring herself to look at him.

It wasn't possible not to _see_ him, of course, the room only being so large. So as she stepped over the threshold Emma fixed her eyes to the floor, as though she meant to memorize the precise pattern of the tile beneath her feet. The air smelt of boiled plant, a fire burned in the grate affording some light in the space. It was quiet, save for the rustle of the wind out the open window. It all felt strange and unfamiliar.

She'd not often had the occasion to linger in a sickroom. She wasn't a mage, she couldn't heal. She couldn't make potions, could barely tell one sort of shrub from the next, let alone what medicinal properties they held. Her hands were rough and calloused where they gripped her daggers, her hands that she had only ever taught to inflict punishment and violence, to be her instruments of destruction. The only care she'd ever known to offer was the swift and silent mercy of a sharp blade shoved between the ribs. She shuddered at the thought.

"Do I truly look that awful?"

Emma sucked in a breath, pulled up her head in surprise before she could catch herself, to find she was being studied. Wan light from a small gilt lantern on the nightstand played across the features of Sebastian's face as they regarded one another for a moment that went on far too long.

"Yes." She answered at last, unable to tear herself away from him. It was worse than awful. He looked so frail. Stripped of the reverent aura of his Chantry robes and bereft of the righteous confidence he exuded in his armor he seemed diminished somehow, the solid, steadfast, presence to which she was accustomed all wasted away. The man before her now was only that, drawn and weary and weak.

And then to her utter bewilderment he _laughed_ at that, a quiet wheeze even she couldn't fail to identify as amusement. "No, don't look like that." He was apologetic at once, his speech slow and carefully measured. "I've not yet taken leave of my senses." He assured her. "Anyone else would have at least tried to humor me, after all."

Emma stood baffled. "I don't understand."

"It's you." He said, as though it would serve to explain. It didn't, at least not to her, and they lapsed back into silence, heavy with the weight of too many things too long left unsaid and no good place to begin. "Would you like to sit down?" He offered. There was a chair that had been set close to the bed.

Emma eyed the seat as though it were a thing not to be trusted. "I'd prefer to stand." She answered stiffly, even as she shifted her weight from one tired foot to the other. She would get no closer. "I shouldn't stay long, I just wanted to..." She faltered, fell silent, tried again. "I just wanted to say..." The words stuck in the desert of her throat and in their place others rushed out. "How did this happen, Sebastian? Didn't you know you were in danger?"

Sebastian winced as he pushed himself up farther against the headboard so as to face her better. "I expressed a willingness to entertain the idea of staking a claim for an already occupied throne. It would have been naive of me to think I could do so without taking a substantial risk." He paused. "I have never known the threat of danger to deter you from your work."

"That is not the same." She argued. "I don't know any better. You had a choice."

"To remain a brother in the Chantry and leave the people of Starkhaven to the whim of a usurper to save my own skin. That's so." He conceded. "When my family was murdered, I put my faith in the Maker, that He would show me the way. Do you know what He showed me?"

Emma shrugged in wordless ignorance.

"A woman. The likes of which I'd never seen before. A woman willing to stand and fight for what she thinks is right, unafraid. And I followed her, saw the world as she does, and I knew then there was nothing I would not do to make myself worthy to stand at her side."

He spoke and Emma felt her pulse quicken as she heard every uncertainly she'd harbored be struck down and replaced with unflinching, unrelenting truth. Her eyes burned with tears that would not fall. "You're sick. You don't know what you're saying." She tried to deny him.

He wouldn't stop. "I do. If this is my last day, it will not be my last regret that I could not tell you-" He grimaced, his voice clipped off in a strangled gasp.

"Sebastian?" Alarmed she began to rush forward and caught herself. "I'm going to get help."

"No, please." He choked out, a raw plea that rooted her in place. "It cannot be stopped. It's in my blood, I feel it burning, the pain..." He bit back another cry of anguish. "Maker forgive me, I am afraid to die. Please. Please don't leave me. I am afraid."

She couldn't breathe, heart hammering so hard in her chest she swore it would burst as she stood helpless but to watch him unravel. "I don't know what to do." She keened, plaintive and helpless. "Help." She called out, unable to bear his suffering but unable to leave. "He needs-"

It came as a sound. A single note that rolled long and deep through the open window and then again, the sound of it slow and sonorous, _soothing_ as it faded and was rung anew. In the midst of the maelstrom the bells at the Chantry started to chime, calling the faithful to gather for the morning Chant. Emma was struck by its toll, struck by an instant of perfect clarity cut through the chaos.

She swallowed hard and forced herself forward, forced herself to break free of the shackles of her restraint. She went to the bed, to his side and she sank to her knees as the request tumbled out of her. "Teach me." She begged. "I...I want to chant."

Daughter of an apostate and sibling to another, Emma had hardly been raised an Andrastian, had never turned to prayer for anything in her life. It was beyond her to say if the Maker was real but it had never seemed to make a different either way. She didn't do it for herself. Sebastian lived and breathed the Chant, believed to the very core of his being that He would restore the world to paradise the day that every voice in Thedas rose up together in its verse. She found she could do it for him, if her voice could bring him even the slightest semblance of peace.

"I cannot." He whimpered.

"Yes you can." She refused to let him give up, her encouragement vehement, soft but fierce. "You must. It is your duty as a brother of the Chantry, to offer guidance to all that seek it." And she reached out, barely conscious of the movement, her hand sliding along the mattress until it found his, clenched in the covers of the bed. "You know the words by heart, I know you do. Teach me, please."

Blue eyes marred with terror and agony met hers and he took a serrated breath. When he spoke his voice was shaky and rough. "M-Maker, though the darkness comes upon me," he started as his desperate hold on the bed sheets loosened and their fingers laced together. "I shall embrace the light."

Emma nodded her support, listened to the words and repeated them back to him. A solemn call and answer, in the dark before the dawn of an uncertain day. When the verse was finished they started anew, together then, over and again, each repetition less fraught than the last, so focused on the words they neither were aware just how tightly they held fast to the other.

"I shall weather...the...weather...the..." He began to stumble over the words after a time, fighting to keep his eyes open as he faltered.

"I shall weather the storm." She finished for him. "You shall endure." It wasn't how it went but there was no other way she could say it, wanting it so badly to be true. As though if she said it aloud, she could will it into being. "Go back to sleep." She whispered, with a tenderness she could have never fathomed herself capable of.

"Will you stay with me?" He whispered back.

As though she could have denied him anything, ever. "Until you send me away."

"Forever, then." He amended and the corners of his mouth twitched in a faint and feeble smile as he relaxed at last, began to drift off to sleep.

"Forever." She agreed, even as the very notion of it broke her heart, to know how short a time it might prove to be.

They could have no grand declaration of love, there could be no sweeping displays of affection between a recalcitrant rogue and her pious prince, only a quiet promise whispered at the end of a prayer. A few heartbeats of serenity, in a fragile moment of their own creation. As Sebastian slipped away his hold on her loosened and Emma felt pins and needles in her fingers as the feeling returned to them. Her eyes fell to see their hands bound together at last.

This was their one small comfort, amidst the ruin.

She leaned into the edge of the bed, exhausted beyond measure, her own eyelids growing heavy. _Just for a moment,_ she told herself, as she lowered her head to rest on her arm in the empty space between them. All she wanted was to stay close to him, lulled by the steady, even cadence of his breathing as he slept. She closed her eyes. _Only for a moment..._

She had only started to doze when she felt a hand on her shoulder. Emma jerked awake at once, blinking the haze from her eyes as she turned and looked up. She gasped and pulled away from Sebastian with a guilty start when she recognized at once who had come.

It was no less than Grand Cleric Elthina herself standing over her, outline haloed in the gray morning light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Credit for stuff that isn't mine: The verse Sebastian teaches Emma is from the Canticle of Trials 1:10
> 
> I am, as always, sorry for the wait.


End file.
